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Snow Mountain Passage: A Novel (Library Binding)

by James D. Houston (Author) "THEY HAVE BEEN following the sandy borders of the Platte through level country that changes little from day to day, an undulating sea of grasses..." (more)

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Product Details

Library Binding: 315 pages
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1439568707
ISBN-13: 978-1439568705

Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)

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Product Description

From Amazon.com

Snow Mountain Passage is a novel about the Donner Party. Still reading? Never fear, this is no corpse fest along the lines of Piers Paul Read's Alive, and its concerns are anything but prurient. For James Houston, who has written movingly about California in the past, the Donner Party's experiences exemplify the ambition, the courage, and the sheer hubris of those who ventured into territory as unfamiliar to them as the moon. His book is not just a blow-by-blow account of what went wrong and who ate whom, it's a searing portrait of both the promises and the perils of the American dream.

Houston follows the events of 1847 through the eyes of James Reed and his daughter Patty. Exiled from the party after he accidentally killed one of its members, Reed made it over the Sierras before snow locked what is now called Donner Pass. His family, however, did not. Along with more than 80 other stranded emigrants, they erected crude cabins below the summit and settled in for a long winter of hunger, cold, madness, and cannibalism, chronicled by Patty Reed in prose of uncommon urgency and even beauty. Here, for instance, she watches as her mother walks away with the first rescue party, leaving her by the shores of Truckee Lake:

My body was like an empty bottle sitting on a dark shelf in an empty cupboard. A cold sun was shining. While we stood there the wind came up, rushing through the pines with a sound like surf, a gushing roar like water on the rise, as if an ocean of ice water had begun to pour across the world.

In contrast, the book lags while James Reed crisscrosses California, attempting to scare up a rescue party for his family. And the author spends far too much time describing the landscape. This reader found at least half her attention back at Truckee Lake with the starving emigrants, wondering guiltily, "Have they eaten anyone yet?" Still, the book generally moves along at a terrific clip, its characters sketched with swift, sure strokes, and their disastrous decisions depicted without excuses or blame. "You couldn't have stopped him," Patty thinks about her father, who persuaded his traveling companions to take the fatal route. "Or stopped any of it." The Donner Party's fate, Houston implies, was as inevitable as America's great westward expansion. But like that epic movement, Snow Mountain Passage highlights both the best and the worst in human nature. --Mary Park --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

The myth of California has been a preoccupation of Houston's in both his fiction (Continental Drift) and nonfiction (Californians). Here he reimagines the saga of perhaps the most infamous of California dreamers: the ill-fated Donner Party. The story is told primarily from the perspective of James Frazier Reed, one of the leaders of the party, who sets out in a luxurious, fully equipped wagon he calls the Palace Car, with his wife, two sons and two daughters. Somewhere in Nevada, jealousy and trumped-up murder charges oblige him to ride ahead alone, leaving his family behind with the party. When the wagon train is stranded for the winter in the Sierra Nevada, Reed must try on his own to assemble a rescue team. His efforts bring him into contact with petty despots (John Sutter, for example), thieves and opportunists, as well as people of uncommon nobility and dignity. In making Reed central to the story, Houston is true to history (the Donner brothers were marginal players in the drama) as he presents a compelling portrait of a man who was a mixture of renegade and hero, his unrealistic dreams of grandeur imperiling his family. Alternating with Reed's tale are trail notes written from memory 75 years later by his daughter Patty, depicting the despair and madness besetting starving members of the snowed-in families. A dispassionate observer at age eight, Patty learns to trust and reveal her compassion, and sitting by the bay in Santa Cruz as an old woman, she brings a redemptive note to an undertaking usually viewed with reflexive loathing. Haunting and immediate, Houston's novel reveals its protagonists in all their vulnerability and moral ambiguity. (Apr.)Forecast: This could be a breakout book for Houston, who has a solid but mostly local reputation. His previous efforts have fared well critically, but a 40,000 first printing signals Knopf's commitment to leading his latest into the promised land of higher sales.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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THEY HAVE BEEN following the sandy borders of the Platte through level country that changes little from day to day, an undulating sea of grasses broken here and there by clumps of trees along the river. Read the first page

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Commentaires client les plus utiles

3.0�toiles sur 5 Mixed feelings, Juil 16 2007

Par	Misfit (Seattle, WA USA) - Voir tous mes commentaires (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Snow Mountain Passage (Paperback)

I admit to being a bit disappointed, as this book turned out to be more about Jim Reed and less about the Donner party. The first part of the book was very entertaining as it dealt with the Donner/Reed group on the trail to California. A disagreement arises between Reed and another leading to a fight and Reed has to leave the wagon train and strike out on his own towards California on horse ahead of the others. Once the wagon train reaches Truckee and snow hits and they realize they can go no further, the story leaves them and the middle third of the book is about Reed's travels on the other side of the Sierras. I found this part to be quite boring and I was literally skimming and skipping chapters. I just wasn't interested (nor expecting) to read about the US/Mexican war in California nor Reed's involvement with same.

Interspered with the author's writings of Reed's story are Notes from the Trail by his daughter Patty that were written when Patty was much older. Those were the chapters that held my interest, especially the story of the rescue and getting the survivors out of their winter camp and over the mountains to safety.

All in all a reasonably interesting read, but I'm glad I got it from the library as it's one I'm not likely to want to read again. Four stars for Patty's Notes from the Trail, two stars for the story of Jim Reed and the US/Mexican war.

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4.0�toiles sur 5 fascinating story, Jui 11 2004

Par	C. Hill (Oregon, U.S.) - Voir tous mes commentaires (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Snow Mountain Passage (Paperback)

This book tells the story of the 87 stranded emigrants in the ill-fated Donner party, stuck in the Sierra Nevadas during the winter of 1846-1847, the worst winter on record in those mountains. The story is told from the perspectives of 8-year-old Patty Reed and her father James Reed, who was actually a far more prominent figure in the wagon party than either of the Donner brothers, for whom the tragedy, the lake, and the mountain pass are all named. While the Reed family is stranded with their fellow emigrants just short of the mountain summit, James Reed (who made it out of the mountains ahead of his family, and barely in time before the worst of the blizzards hit) is gallavanting around California, simultaneous fighting the ongoing war there and trying to drum up support for a rescue party to go in and get his family out of the mountains. This part of the story gets quite dull at times, especially since the author spends too much time describing the California landscape and not enough time describing action. Far more time is spent following Reed's journeys criss-crossing California than is spent on Patty's "trail notes" that describe what's going on at the emigrant's mountain camp. Still, it's a fascinating story, not for the traditional canibalistic slant that is always attributed to the tale (and in fact there's very little description of that in Houston's book), but because of the fact that despite the horribly difficult hardship those 87 people suffered that winter, 48 of them still managed to survive three months of slow starvation and bitter cold before they were finally rescued. This book will instill a healthy respect for mother nature as well as admiration for the tough spirit of those pioneers.

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4.0�toiles sur 5 A stunning contrast of extremes...., Nov. 23 2002

Par	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - Voir tous mes commentaires (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Snow Mountain Passage (Hardcover)

Most Californians are familiar with the infamous Donner Party. Attempting to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains before the winter storms in1846, the wagon train has fragmented along the difficult terrain, prey to the harsh weather, unfortunate decisions and other unforseeable perils. Two separate camps are forced to build shelters for the winter, to wait for rescue, with negligible food and resources.

Jim Reed is one of the driving forces behind the wagon train, hundreds of hopeful settlers willing to gamble their future for a new life in California, a land of infinite opportunities for the enterprising settlers. Reed has the grandest wagon, specially built for his wife and four children, stocked with all the household items necessary for comfort, including a cast iron stove. Tempers grow short as the dispirited families near the final obstacle, the Sierra Nevada Mountains; they will have to work together, even disassembling the wagons and goods to traverse the craggy mountain terrain. During an altercation, Jim Reed stabs another man to death and is ostracized from the camp. He travels ahead, crossing the mountains that are already covered with an early snow, a sign of the devastating winter to come. It is Reed's intention to form a rescue party, men, horses and food, and return to help the settlers to safety. Weather and circumstances combine to thwart his best efforts, putting the pioneers in grave danger before he can return.

Most novels about the Donner Party dwell on the primitive conditions where families struggle with bitter cold and starvation, desperately reverting to cannibalism to survive. The voice of the Donner Party is Patty Reed, who is only eight years old, watching her siblings and neighbors starve. In her eighties, she looks back over the years and ponders her memories, wondering how it could have been different.

In contrast, most of the story revolves around the adventures of Jim Reed after his journey through the mountains. California is in the middle of a struggle between Mexico and the US military, in an attempt to establish California as a state. Reed fights alongside the soldiers and meets influential acquaintances that will later support his bid for land. Greedy men set their sights on land too rich and fertile to be left in the hands of Mexicans or Indians, whom they plan to use as laborers. Later, when the Mormon settlers arrive, they find that California has already been plundered, divided among the most influential and powerful settlers. The prose is flawless, contrasting the extremes of fortune: Reed adventuring through the country he has longed for, rich with friendship and camaraderie and the tragic straits of starving pioneers, thankful to remain alive day by day.

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Commentaires client les plus r�cents

4.0�toiles sur 5 A different perspective
Houston's novel, Snow Mountain Passage, is interesting from the perspective that he does not claim it to be fact, just a different view of the incident that has fascinated... Read more

Publi� le Juil 11 2002 par thinking in 3r

3.0�toiles sur 5 Why compare to Lonesome Dove???
It's a decent read, but spends entirely too much time crisscrossing various landscapes with old Jim. Read more

Publi� le Jui 22 2002 par Kersten Christianson

5.0�toiles sur 5 More than Gore
Through the eyes of eight year old Patty Reed and her father, Jim, the story of the Donner Party is told. Read more

Publi� le Mai 30 2002 par Janice M. Hansen