As many times as I’ve heard the words “Donner Party“, I really didn’t know much about the its history. All I knew was Donner Party = Cannibals. I was very intrigued by the fantastic reviews I read of The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep by Allan Wolf, and so I picked it up a few days ago. At first I had a hard time getting into it, but then I really couldn’t stop reading because I wanted to know how things turned out for all the people I was reading about. It’s made pretty clear from the get go, that many of the men, women, and children migrating from the Midwest to California die of hunger (one of the narrators of the story is Hunger), sickness, and cold. That didn’t stop me from wanting to know exactly what happened, how people can be driven to become cannibals. The story is told from the points of view of several of the pioneers and Miwok Indian guides, and really makes you understand how they all must have felt that terrible winter. It was a sad and at times, brutal, story, but I’m very glad that I read it. I would give this to any teen, grades 8 and up, interested in history or historical fiction, that would like to learn more about the Donner Party.
