* An “Indie Next Notable Pick” (Association of American Booksellers)
* A New York Times “Editor’s Pick” (May 10, 2009)
* A Featured Alternate Selection for the following book clubs: Book of the Month Club, The History Book Club, Quality Paperback Book Club, The Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, and BOMC2.
* Now available in paperback and various electronic editions, including Kindle.
The Indifferent Stars Above traces the footsteps of Sarah Graves, a young bride who left her home in Illinois in the spring of 1846, bound for California. Along the way, she and her new husband became members of the notorious and ill-fated Donner Party and ran into a world of trouble. Sarah’s story is among the least known but most compelling aspects of the Donner Party tragedy. Library Journal calls the book “a fresh and intriguing telling.”
What makes it so intriguing? Perhaps most importantly the fact that, unlike so many who died while waiting for rescue, Sarah was one of a handful of the Donner Party members who attempted to hike out of the Sierra Nevada to save herself and her family. What transpired during her thirty-two day trek may startle you, may horrify you, or may fill you with admiration for the human spirit, but it will always, I’m confident, compel your attention.
Reviews
“The Indifferent Stars Above is an ideal pairing of talent and material…With tragedy of this scale an unadorned telling of the events speaks loudest…The understatement of simple circumstances delivers the emotional wallop all by itself.”
—Mary Roach, The New York Times Book Review
“Remarkable…A hard-to-put-down book about an event in American history that has been sensationalized, mythologized, and maligned. What Brown does is make it understood.”
—The Seattle Times
“A supple, readable, and well-researched narrative…Never melodramatic or maudlin, Brown’s work gracefully balances graphic depictions of extreme privation with humanizing glimpses of the emigrants’ everyday hopes and fears. Brown also skillfully weaves relevant historical, cultural, and scientific information into his chronicle, creating a rich and contextualized background. Likely to appeal to true adventure and history fans…”
—Ingrid Levin, Library Journal
“Brown draws from the many previously published accounts of the tragedy, letters from the party and those who knew them, accounts of life on the Oregon and California trails, genealogical databases, and his own travel along the trail…but he tells the tale with a novelist’s touch.”
—The Boston Globe
“Daniel James Brown brings the myth to life, transforming faint history-class memories into gripping reality…It’s not a pretty tale, but Brown makes it utterly compelling, creating a horror story that we keep hoping will have a happy ending, even as we know it won’t.”
—BookPage
“Brown delivers a skillful, suspenseful study of the Donner party…a moving man-against-nature tragedy that still resonates today.”—Kirkus Reviews
“A compelling retelling of the ghastly events surrounding the Donner party. Daniel James Brown, using one survivor’s experience as his focus, moves beyond the cardboard figures depicted in previous accounts and shows how the lucky few endured and survived.”
— Irvin Molotsky, author of The Flag, the Poet and the Song: The story of the Star Spangled Banner.