Title: Fascinating, but...
Review: The Donner Party survival story is a powerful icon of westward expansion and California history. Houston's novel is fascinating, but somehow steers away from facing clearly those families marooned in the snow. I read two books on the Donner party. A 1936 history by George R. Stewart, Ordeal by Hunger, is still in print available in paperback at Amazon. Somehow, the straightforward historical story is more vivid than Houston's novel. I felt that he kept the pain of the incident at a distance by concentrating on James Reed and viewing the horror though the long-ago memory of Patty Reed. As a history of the early American settling of California, I found it quite interesting.
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