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(More customer reviews)As an introduction to the story of the Donner Party, this is a good choice. Unfortunately, that's because of some "wrong reasons." Rhodes takes huge liberties with the historical record in order to create a good novel. As one example, the terrific climax, which is foreshadowed by a number of details throughout the book is, like the details, total conjecture. (And rather perniciously, the conjecture is now turning up in subsequent books, giving it the weight of fact.)
Rhodes takes a peculiar route to telling the story, mimicking the style (and, in the Stanford reprint, even the typeface) of 19th-century travel literature. It is as if he is a participant, keeping a daily journal. In fact, when Patrick Breen begins keeping a journal, Rhodes includes that. Breen's journal is a model of tediousness, seldom offering more than "Snowed again. Sure hungry. Wind SSW," as the observations of a day. The quotations are more like illustrations than text that advances the story.
And of course Rhodes is not a participant; he's a modern American almost as distant from the realities of the event as he is from life on Mars. His Donner party is not just literate but far too modern in their sensibilities. The effect is subtle, like the wrong herb in a sauce.
The journalist's eye approach falls into difficulty almost immediately, when the action splits into two, then three, and eventually four or more venues. Even as well as I know the story (I've recently read a handful of Donner books), I was confused at times when a paragraph on the cabins was followed by one on the Forlorn Hope struggling westward, then one about Jim Reed recruiting rescuers in San Francisco, all without transition. This is a rather artificial confusion that does nothing, again, to advance the story. It leaves us reflecting on the author's skill rather than on the story.
So it's historically inaccurate and hard to follow. Uh, how does that make it a good place to start? Well, although more than 50% of the story is invented, and a good deal is invented in defiance of the historical record, the result of the invention is a solid, entertaining novel that gives you a grasp of what happened. Not all the facts are historical, and the motivations are subjective, and both these things are potential flaws in a historical novel.
As fiction, it works. Rhodes demonizes Lewis Keseberg, but as a literary invention, his Keseberg is a credible monster. He invents some demeaning things about Charles Stanton, but they could be true. He humanizes the cannibalism decided upon in three different locations independently; each group rationalizes its decision in a different way. If the narrative flow is a bit startling, once we accept it, the story unfolds cleanly.
Is this the best book on the Donner tragedy? Weighing its faults and merits, I have to say no. But "best" isn't just subjective, it's situational. If you want to get as clear as you can about what really happened, based on the most current evidence, then the best book without question is Rarick's new history, Desperate Passage. It strips the story down to the verifiable and gives you that is spare, readable prose. However, aside from Stewart's casual and complacent bigotry, Ordeal by Hunger is easier to read and more immediate.
If you want a sense of the event from inside, on the ground, as the people suffered and died, read Vardis Fisher's The Mothers, which I still consider the best fictional account. Written in 1943 by a man who grew up on the Idaho frontier and knew hunger first-hand, it's hard to beat. But I have to confess that I had to think a long time before choosing it over The Ungodly.
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The Ungodly: A Novel of the Donner Party (Stanford General Books)In 1846 several hundred wagons set out from Independence, Missouri, to follow the California Trail nearly 2,000 miles across unpopulated prairies, up sluggish and seemingly endless rivers, and through the Rocky Mountains over the Continental Divide.There, where the water flowed west to the far Pacific, the more prudent emigrants swung north through present-day Idaho, though that was the longer way west.One group, the Donner Party, braver or more foolhardy than the rest, chose an untried route that would shorten the distance.It did.It also subjected them to obstacles so formidable that it cost many of them their lives.Yet it preserved their names and the story of their travail down through history-crowded years.No work of fiction has rendered this remarkable epic of ordeal with more vividness and power than Richard Rhodes's novel of the Donner Party, The Ungodly. Upon its initial printing in 1973, Rhodes's masterful tale was praised for its realistic and gripping depiction of the struggles faced by that ill-fated group of men, women, and children.Now, more than thirty years later, Stanford University Press has reissued this harrowing and haunting novel. The Ungodly is an unforgettable story of terrible hardship and awesome courage-a story that increases our understanding of what kind of people made this nation and what a full and immeasurable price they paid.
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