Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West
by: Ethan Rarick
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Dewey Decimal Number: 979.437
EAN: 9780195305029
ISBN: 0195305027
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: February 04, 2008
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Sales Rank: 51210
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
In late October 1846, the last wagon train of that year's westward migration stopped overnight before resuming its arduous climb over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, unaware that a fearsome storm was gathering force. After months of grueling travel, the 81 men, women and children would be trapped for a brutal winter with little food and only primitive shelter. The conclusion is known: by spring of the next year, the Donner Party was synonymous with the most harrowing extremes of human survival. But until now, the full story of what happened, what it tells us about human nature and about America's westward expansion, remained shrouded in myth.
Drawing on fresh archaeological evidence, recent research on topics ranging from survival rates to snowfall totals, and heartbreaking letters and diaries made public by descendants a century-and-a-half after the tragedy, Ethan Rarick offers an intimate portrait of the Donner party and their unimaginable ordeal: a mother who must divide her family, a little girl who shines with courage, a devoted wife who refuses to abandon her husband, a man who risks his life merely to keep his word. But Rarick resists both the gruesomely sensationalist accounts of the Donner party as well as later attempts to turn the survivors into archetypal pioneer heroes. 'The Donner Party,' Rarick writes, 'is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous. Often, the emigrants displayed a more realistic and typically human mixture of generosity and selfishness, an alloy born of necessity.'
A fast-paced, heart-wrenching, clear-eyed narrative history, A Desperate Hope casts new light on one of America's most horrific encounters between the dream of a better life and the harsh realities such dreams so often must confront.
Praise for Desperate Passage:
'His is the first significant book, written, like Stewart's, in a novelistic mode and likely to gain popular readership, to incorporate this new data.... Rarick's account is not really about science; it's about humanity.... Rarick has done his homework.'--New York Times Book Review
'Rarick takes an evenhanded and thorough approach to the story of the Donners' covered-wagon migration across the country and their winter entrapment in the Sierras. His telling is evocative and easy to read.'--Seattle Times
'With a reporter's doggedness and a scholar's thoroughness, Rarick has clarified the historical details. ... Rarick makes this compelling frontier drama all the more so.'--National Geographic Adventure Magazine
Average Rating: 
Rating:
- Caught the history bug from my kids...Lack of snow in the Sierras earlier this winter found our family by chance at the museum and memorial ... Read More
Rating:
- A fascinating book you can not put down...I already knew many details of the Donner Party from a PBS special I had seen a few years ago. But, ... Read More
Rating:
- Absolutely AmazingThis book was so utterly amazing in every aspect that I won't be able to come up with the words to do ... Read More
Rating:
- Wonderful research makes an intriguing story even betterEthan Rarick's intriguing account of the Donner party's tortured attempt to reach California in the winter ... Read More
Rating:
- Best Yet on the Donner PartyI live in the area where the Donner Party was trapped, and have read almost all that has been written on the ... Read More
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