Rating: 
Summary: Why compare to Lonesome Dove???
Review: It's a decent read, but spends entirely too much time crisscrossing various landscapes with old Jim. Imagine this story told from the point of view of Patty (exclusively) or better yet, Margaret. It's a far cry from Lonesome Dove, but an interesting summer read.
Rating:
Summary: Why compare to Lonesome Dove???
Review: It's a decent read, but spends entirely too much time crisscrossing various landscapes with old Jim. Imagine this story told from the point of view of Patty (exclusively) or better yet, Margaret. It's a far cry from Lonesome Dove, but an interesting summer read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Perpetual Sampler
Review: James D. Houston novel, Snow Mountain Passage, has two main threads. The minor one is the recollections of an eighty year survivor of the Donner Party looking back to her time as an eight year old during the struggle for survival. The major storyline, though, is that of her father, James Frazier Reed, and his search for a rescue party for his lost family and the other emigrants as he gets caught up in the politics and struggles of a new territory being born. The problem with the book is that the more interesting story (and better writing) lie with the Donner Party and the interesting clash of personalities there. Unfortunately, the reader has to go through much less developed or lively personalities, such as Reed himself, to get back to the heart of the story. The tragedy of the Donners hangs over the entire novel but is not enough to carry it through the less interesting or illuminating sections.
Rating:
Summary: Story of Donner Party Overshadows Story of California
Review: James D. Houston novel, Snow Mountain Passage, has two main threads. The minor one is the recollections of an eighty year survivor of the Donner Party looking back to her time as an eight year old during the struggle for survival. The major storyline, though, is that of her father, James Frazier Reed, and his search for a rescue party for his lost family and the other emigrants as he gets caught up in the politics and struggles of a new territory being born. The problem with the book is that the more interesting story (and better writing) lie with the Donner Party and the interesting clash of personalities there. Unfortunately, the reader has to go through much less developed or lively personalities, such as Reed himself, to get back to the heart of the story. The tragedy of the Donners hangs over the entire novel but is not enough to carry it through the less interesting or illuminating sections.
Rating: 
Summary: A stunning contrast of extremes....
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Native Californian finds heroism in Donner tragedy
Review: One of the most horrifying stories in American history is that of the ill-fated Donner party, stranded in the high Sierras by a vicious snowstorm and held there for months without food before rescue was possible. When the news hit the newspapers at the time, it was sensationalized far beyond the truth, and the horror has never left us. Now native Californian James D. Houston, an award-winning writer, has written a novel about it. A lesser writer would have drawn mostly upon the gory aspects of the story, but Houston is a sensitive author, and in his hands it becomes one of death and survival, of ordeal and weary triumph. Houston has concentrated his novel on two of the characters: James Frazier Reed, and his daughter Patty. James Reed was an affluent father when he set out in 1846 with his wife Margaret and their four children following the California dream and the untried map of Lansford Hastings. From the beginning, Reed incurred the envy of many of his fellow travelers because of his large, specially-made wagon and many comforts the family were taking along the trail. The envy would finally wreak its effects on Reed when after being attacked by a fellow traveler, John Snyder, Reed kills the other man. Reed is almost hung by his irate companions, but after some reason prevails, he is instead banished and sent on ahead while his wife and children continue with the wagon train. No one knows at the time, but being sent ahead will save Reed's life by allowing him to cross the mountains ahead of the snowstorm. His wife and family will be stuck there without him, while he traverses central California looking for a rescue party, then has to wait frustrating months until the snow is passable. Meanwhile, Patty, aged eight, is high in the mountains with her mother, small brothers and older sister. When she is an old woman in her eighties and living in the same house where Houston now lives, she remembers the time through her child's eyes, the intense isolation, gnawing hunger, and severe deprivation experienced by the survivors, the many deaths, and eventual cannibalism. This alternating of narration is a very effective structure for Houston to have followed and dramatizes the plight of the characters. Snow Mountain Passage reads like a suspense thriller, even though the reader knows the outcome of the journey and the people who undertook it. Thanks to one of Reed's descendants and his own great skill as an author, Houston is able to weave the story together by alternating Reed's search for a rescue party and Patty's memoir. I could not put the book down until the final page was read. This will surely become a classic of historical fiction. Mari Lu Robbins
Rating:
Summary: Snow Mountain Passage
Review: One of the very best books written in recent time of California history. I loved this book. The Donner Party has always been an interesting part of California history and this book details the tragedy very well without too much emphasis on the gore of cannibalism. I grew up in San Jose and the portions of the book about that area - the very creek I played in as a child, actually brought me to tears. Books don't often do that for me but this book is special. I recommend you buy the hardback edition and not wait for the paperback. This is a book you will want to reread and perhaps loan to friends. Excellent!
Rating:
Summary: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Elevating a Genre
Review: The problem with most historically based fiction, I find, is that the writer is rarely both a good researcher and a "real" novelist (a real novelist being a writer who takes history and brings the kind of poetic analysis and vision that is probably truer than the facts). James D. Houston in this book has converged the talents of a library pack rat with the stylistic and visionary grasp equal to any of America's contemporary novelists. This is the kind of book that should be assigned in history classes, just to turn people on to history and great writing. It goes way beyond, of course, a recounting of the Donner Party, and takes into the hearts and minds of human beings in a way that only a great novelist can. This book deserves a wide audience. It is a major piece of American fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Worthy
Review: There have been so many excellent books about the 19th century American West in the past year, starting with "Gates of the Alamo" to "The Borderlands" and "The Heartsong of Charging Elk" (my nomination for the best novel of 2000), straight through to "Snow Mountain Passage." James Houston tells the story of the Donner party from the point of view of James Reed, a member of the wagon train who did not spend the winter of 1846 in the Sierra Nevadas. He had been sent on ahead, and was one of the people trying to reach the stranded families from the other side of the mountains. His frustration is excruciating as he battles for support in an area that is consumed with breaking away from Mexico. Rescue parties he mounts are turned back again and again by blizzards. Reed refuses to accept that rescuers may not be able to reach the settlers until the terrible winter is over. He knows that his family and the others cannot survive that long. Survival in the freezing camp is recorded by his youngest daughter, Patty, who looks back on that winter as a woman in her 80's. Her story is told with the clear eyes of a child and the wisdom of an old woman. The fact that there were any survivors is incredible. This was an exceptionally frigid winter, and the families crammed into hastily thrown-together shacks, without heat, polar fleece, or thermals, eating anything, anything to stay alive. There was little heroism. Each group was on its own. Patty's trail diaries reveal the smell, the anger, the hunger, the despair that no one will come to help in time. The desperation is heightened for the Reed family because they are one of the reasons the group did not make it over the summit before winter set in. What keeps James Reed from hero status is his hubris in building an enormous two-story wagon so his family could travel west in comfort. This "Palace Car" slowed everyone down, delaying the group's arrival in the Sierra Nevadas until too late in the year. The Reeds' descent from being the most envied group on the trail to the one with the fewest remaining resources makes Jim Reed even more complex, frantic to save his family from the result of his pride, yet so wrenched by guilt that he is tempted to flee south to fight the Mexicans. Vivid and powerful, "Snow Mountain Passage" is a fine and affecting example of literary fiction, historical fiction, and plain great reading.
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