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--and what it tells us about human nature and about America's westward expansion--remained shrouded in myth.
Drawing on fresh archeological 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. 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, Desperate Passage 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47924 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780195383317
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review

"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
"This sober, unflinching look at one of the great tragedies of America's pioneering past tells us a great deal that is new about the Donner Party's trials. Rarick scythes away the myths of one of the nation's better-known sagas, and offers up this horrific but ennobling tale in all its freshly researched detail. Readers take heed: this is a tough book, but a gripping one."--Simon Winchester, author of Krakatoa
"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
"Desperate Passage is the most up-to-date narrative history of the Donner Party available today and as such is a welcome addition to the literature. General readers, especially those who know of the Donner party only as the cannibal wagon train, will undoubtedly find it a fascinating read."--Overland Journal
"Many books tell the Donner story, but none digs as deep for the truth as Ethan Rarick's Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West.... With personal details...bringing a human touch to the story, Desperate Passage succeeds in rescuing the Donner Party from 162 years of infamy."--Tacoma News Tribune
"A history of the first rank - precise, restrained and compelling.... Desperate Passage makes a gripping tale, and Rarick makes a scrupulous guide."--Cleveland Plain Dealer
"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
"A clean, chilling cautionary story of misjudgment and perseverance.... Rarick deals with this most extreme of issues [cannibalism] with the evenhandedness and lack of melodrama that characterize the book throughout." --Houston Chronicle
"A well-written, copiously documented account."--Deseret Morning News
"Reads like a novel, and for those who are drawn to American history...coupled with one of the most grisly survival tales in history, then this is the absolute book for you."--Monsters and Critics website
"Desperate Passage is a wise book, not only a horror or an adventure story but a universal and timeless tale about acts of desperation performed by average people under extreme conditions - a situation that can befall coal miners in Utah, soccer teams in the Andes, occupants of the World Trade Center, or readers of the book."--Philip L. Fradkin, author of Wallace Stegner and the American West
"Rarick illuminates this classic America stage through a deftly told drama of courage and cowardice...with a fascinating cast ranging from the iconic American Everyman to the astonishing scoundrels."--Van Gordon Sauter, former President, CBSNews
"Like the foreboding passages in an operatic overture, the ordeal of the Donner Party warned Americans that tragedy could not be banished from this newly acquired province. In this meticulously detailed narrative, Ethan Rarick presents the full horror and bravery of a dystopian episode that would forever qualify the California experience."--Kevin Starr, University of Southern California, author of Americans and the California Dream
"The story of the ill-fated Donner Party's trek across the country is the reverse image of Lewis and Clark's: seemingly everything that could go wrong, did go wrong -- from bad leadership to disastrous choices, from fatal accidents to murderous fights, and finally a ghastly ordeal in the Sierra snows. It's a remarkable story for all generations, and with the advantage of updated research and a keen eye for detail, Ethan Rarick builds a quick-moving narrative."--Dayton Duncan, author of Out West: An American Journey Along the Lewis and Clark Trail

About the Author

Ethan Rarick has written about politics, crime, business and sports throughout the West. His work has appeared in many publications, including the Los Angles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, and he is the author of California Rising: The Life and Times of Pat Brown. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Customer Reviews

Fatal Mistakes
History was never my favorite subject. In fact, I managed to get a Master's Degree without taking one history class in college. As I have grown older and visited historic sites while traveling in the western United States, I have become much more interested in history, particularly of the 1800's in America and of this part of the country. Luckily there is no lack of good books on the subject to pick up where my junior high school history class left off. One of the best of these is Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West by Ethan Rarick, released early in 2008.

In the fall of 1846 the Donner party of wagons was the last to try to cross the Sierra Nevada on the way to California. 81 men, women, and children were trapped in the mountains for months by a snowfall that halted their progress west. Desperate Passage is the story of those who survived the ordeal and how they did it, and of those who did not and how they died.

Rarick starts by introducing us to the members of the party, telling us of their lives up until May 12, 1846, when they left Independence, Missouri, and of their hopes and dreams for a new life in California. He chronicles their journey westward with its hard work and deprivations, and their apparently fateful decision to take the untried Hastings Cutoff. He details their winter in the snowy mountains without sufficient provisions; successful and unsuccessful attempts by some of the members to go for help; the death, desperation, and sacrifices of both the members of the party and some of their would-be rescuers; and the ultimate rescue early in 1847 of the last of the survivors.

Based on "fresh archaeological evidence" and recent research, Desperate Passage includes maps, pictures, and a list of "dramatis personae" to help the reader keep things straight. A rapid read, it is an engrossing, well-written, and thorough book, and a must-read for anyone interested in history - even us Johnny-come-latelys.

Sparkling History
This tale is so dramatic, so compelling, and so ably told, it puts me in mind of Nathaniel Philbrick's award winning In The Heart Of The Sea. Like Philbrick's book, I found it very difficult to put Desperate Passage down.
Many people are familiar with the basics of the Donner party's story. They are caught in a blizzard in the Sierra Nevada mountains during an 1846 trek to California. So desperate does their plight become that they resort to cannabilism to survive. Ethan Rarick fills in the details of the story -- he "fleshes" it out, as it were. This he does in prose as crisp and clear as a bright winter's morn.
Desperate Passage is narrative history at its best. Take up this book, and you will not be disappointed.

A Wagon Train In The Winter
Mr. Rarick tells the familiar story of the Donner Party's tragic trek to California in 1846-1847. Marooned in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the winter with little food and poor shelter, this tale of survival is buttressed by new archaeology and by extensive review of primary sources. This documentation fuels his picture of the Reed family and centers the deprivations and the rescue around them. The book moves at a good clip and gives an overall picture of this twice-told tale.