Manifest Destiny. A new life in the great unknown expanse of the American West. Hearts and minds full of anticipation as the Donner Party left Saint Louis, Missouri in 1846. All ages, senior citizens to newborns, on board covered wagons filled with life’s possessions, pulled by teams of oxen. After a perilous journey the promised land beckoned.

Daniel James Brown tells the story of the Donner Party in a page turning narrative THE INDIFFERENT STARS ABOVE. The heavens looked down upon the greatest human tragedy of the pioneering westward movement. Meet Lansford Hastings a swashbuckling promotor who had a plan to divert the pioneers from heading to Oregon on the more established Oregon Trail to take the now infamous Hastings Cutoff to a promised land in Northern California. The Donner party after successfully traversing hundreds of miles from St. Louis made the fatal mistake of believing Hastings’s far fetched promises and took the Hastings Cutoff.

The result is a harrowing true story of a fight for survival under the most dreadful circumstances in the snow bound Sierra Nevada Mountains. Eighty seven souls left St Louis and less than half survived. How they survived is at the heart of Brown’s research and storytelling. The word pictures are unimaginable.

Daniel James Brown is also the author of The Boys in the Boat, a far more uplifting story. He also wrote of another tragedy, The Great Hinkley Firestorm of 1894.