Don Wildman

And now time is the enemy.

In the distance, high in the Sierra Nevada, for these travelers known as the Donner Party, winter is already on its way.

Hi, everybody.

Don Wildman here.

I'm your host, and this is American History Hit.

Welcome.

In 1846, in the midst of the Great Migration West, a group of pioneering families set out across the frontier to settle new lands and start new lives.

But a series of poor decisions, consequential delays, and misleading directions led them to a dreadful fate.

It is a story that has become synonymous with doom and disaster in the American imagination.

It is the story of the Donner Party.

What happened to these unfortunate folks has become legend, but their ordeal was all too real, and it is detailed in an incredible book entitled The Indifferent Stars Above, The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party, published in 2009 and has since then become one of the most

widely read and respected accounts of this extraordinary tragedy.

And the author of that book is our guest today, Daniel James Brown, New York Times bestselling author of historical nonfiction, great books like Boys in the Boat and Facing the Mountain, both on my shelf here in the office.

Mr. Brown, welcome to American History Hit.

Welcome.

Thanks so much for having me.

You're well known for your vivid portraits of historical events, for breathing life into history on the page.

Curious what drew you to this tale of so much suffering and death?

It is interesting when you visit this story geographically, when you're up there around Tahoe and up in the Sierras.

It's so close to us if you're in California nowadays, but that was so far away back in the day, and that was the problem.