Before reading “The Indifferent Stars Above” I had never really done a deep dive into the Donner Party and the events around it. We all heard about it at some point in school and I think we all developed the same shared assumption that some wagons broke down, it started snowing, people ate each other to survive, and that was about it.
Well, there was a whole hell of a lot of stuff I did not know that “The Indifferent Stars Above” shed some light on. I had no idea the Donner party was comprised of 87 people. Also, I had no clue that over half of those people were children, including six infants. I was unaware of hidden gold and silver all over the campsites and the problems that this caused.
Over the last couple of years, I have been on a quest to read the most mind-shatteringly messed up horror novels I can find. This organically led to me finding the Horror Lit subreddit. A very interesting post popped up on here a few months ago that posed the question, “what is a non-horror novel you’ve read that scared you.” Two books caught my eye. One was a doctors first hand account of an Ebola outbreak and the other was this book.
Well, the reddit nerds were correct. “The Indifferent Stars Above” is a haunting account of the whole slew of poor decisions that led up to the group getting stuck in the Donner Pass, the traumatizing events that led to them eating each other, and, probably most disturbing, the last third of the book describes how all of the 48 survivors lived and died after they were rescued.
Two things from this book will stick with me. The first is the last two people to be rescued, Lewis Keseberg and Tamsen Donner, have a super interesting controversial story about them. I don’t want to spoil anything, but Keseberg spent years convincing people he didn’t kill Tamsen just to eat her. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary. The second thing is the following quote: “When killing to survive, it’s easiest to kill and eat whatever or whomever you are least attached to — cattle before horses, dogs before people, strangers before acquaintances, acquaintances before friends, friends before family.” Brutal.
This was a great read that really sparked my deep appreciation for being born in the safest and most productive time to be alive. The hell that some people had to go through to make this country what it is today is unfathomable.
I give this a perfect 20/20 on my Borg book scale.