In THE INDIFFERENT STARS ABOVE, author Daniel James Brown tackles the story of The Donner Party and their ill-fated journey across the United States to the promised land of California.

Before reading this book, I had maybe a passing knowledge of The Donner Party in that I only knew them as “those pioneers who ate each other”, but obviously there is much more to the story. Putting any blame at all on the bulk of the eighty-seven members of the party is misguided at best. I mean sure, they were given improbably bad directions by someone claiming to have discovered a shortcut that would save them a few hundred miles on their journey, no one could have expected the unthinkable hardship that would befall them simply by going off the beaten path.

It’s important to remember that these were human beings being forced to make unimaginably difficult decisions in order to protect themselves and one another against the cruelty of nature. In fact, it’s worth noting that they waited an impressively long time before even the thought of consuming the dead became a possibility. However, once that door opens, it’s not easily shut.

What is most remarkable about this book is Brown’s uncanny ability to put the reader in the tattered shoes of the dying. He goes to great lengths to hammer home the incessant cold, the hopelessness, and the unrelenting hunger pains that had plagued every soul trapped in the crushing grip of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Even when you think things take a turn for the better, another seemingly impossible tragedy cuts the feet out from under them. Brown also makes sure to educate the reader as best he can on the hard facts of hyper/hypothermia, hunger pains, the state of the Mexican-American War, and the incoming gold rush to give a sense of time and place. These parts of the book are intensely interesting and never feel like padding or info-dumping in the slightest.

While this is certainly a difficult read that demands of its reader a strong stomach, it’s ultimately worth it. Many of the descriptions of the ravaged bodies subjected to cannibalism will stick with me for years to come. While I can certainly understand and empathize with why they did what they did, it is impossible for any of us to judge them having never been in that unenviable situation.

If you’re like me and live in the Western world and also happen to enjoy a comfortable middle-class life with things like GPS, coast-to-coast roads, and being constantly connected to “the grid”, how can you ever understand the bravery it took to pack up your life and move to a largely unsettled part of the world through a mostly un-navigated trail? It’s unthinkable, but many people did it, facing hardship along the way. It’s hard to imagine a worst-case scenario than this one, however.