Book Review: The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep: Voices from the Donner Party by Allan Wolf

The Donner Party left a bloody footnote in United States history and this book is a novelization about their journey and hardships.

Can you imagine walking across the United States? Can you imagine what it was like to be a part of the Great Western Expansion when hundreds of people walked, rode horses, traveled by wagon across the United States? Did you know that these wagon trains traveled on average at about 3 miles per hour? We drive across this country now and pick up a bite to eat or visit a bathroom at a rest stop. It still feels like a gargantuan endeavor, but early settlers faced difficult challenges - bad weather, illness, few resources… BUT the Donner Party faced unfathomable difficulties and even harder choices when they chose to travel a relatively new path AND the weather turned bad much earlier than expected. I mean really bad. Seriously folks, 15-20 FEET OF SNOW. That makes even the worst of our New Hampshire winters seem tame.

Read this historical fiction pieced together by author Allan Wolf from documents and stories shared by both survivors and those who perished (through letters and journals.) And yes, there is cannibalism involved - so if you are squeamish - don’t pick up this book. But if you are brave enough to crack open these pages - put yourself in their shoes and think about how you might survive. Think about how each person carries within themselves the possibility of heroic and villainous acts - often times both.

Finally, note that there are extensive notes at the end of this novel. Please check them out before you start reading - you will find a list of characters (put a bookmark on this page because it is hard to keep everyone straight), a timeline, short biographies of the characters in this story, some glossaries and more. Some you might want to read before you get started, and some you might want to leave until the end. But know they are there.

 

Book Review: Race Against Time: The Untold Story of Scipio Jones adn the Battle to Save Twelve Innocent Men / Sandra Neil Wallace and Richard Wallace

I found a new hero today, Scipio Jones. This slim volume came to the library recently and it captured my attention. I love to fill my mind with heroes.

In October of 1919 a group of Black sharecroppers met at their church with the intent of staring a union. These men had been farming other's land and were not being given a fair share of the profits. The landowners were angry and formed a mob that shot at the sharecroppers, destroyed their church and burned it to the ground. Many were rounded up for arrest, and twelve of these men were sentenced to death for crimes they didn't commit.

Enter Scipio Africanus Jones. Though he wasn't allowed into law school, he found some lawyers who would let him apprentice with them. He stepped up and fought in court for these men, often using his own money to provide for their defense. 

This man is the definition of a hero - dedicated, persistent, caring, stubborn. 

You can read about this man in Race Against Time found on the shelves of the South Library. 

Book and Movie Review: Hidden Figures, book by Margot Lee Shetterly

Hidden Figures tells the story of how a group of black women broke both the race and sex barrier when they acquired jobs at NACA/NASA as mathematicians. It is an important story to be told. There is also a lot here about how it felt to live in the USA as a black person during the mid twentieth century. 

However, this book was a bit hard to get through. There is a lot of information here and important information, but it was hard to get through. The telling wasn't linear and skipped from one character to another. I had the book in front of me in print, and also was listening to the audio book. (which I borrowed through SORA - I have the Nashua Public library connected to my SORA account.) I ended up speeding up the recording to 175 percent so that I could get through it. There is a pretty good index so I think it could be helpful for reports on the Space Race, Feminisim, Civil Rights, American History.

AND THEN I watched the movie. I am not sure how accurate the movie was, and it certainly didn't cover all of the information in the book, but it was enjoyable. It centered on three of the women and told their stories in a manner that could be digested. 

So lessons learned -

• Sometimes the move IS better
• Some books are better for research than for reading cover to cover
• This is not the book for me