The Ungodly: A Novel of the Donner Party

In the year 1846 men took their families west to California and a new life. The families of the Donner Party were among them. Several hundred wagons set out from Independence, Missouri, to follow the California Trail nearly 2,000 miles across unpopulated prairies, up sluggish and seemingly endless rivers, and through the Rocky Mountains over the Continental Divide. There, where the water flowed west to the far Pacific, the more prudent emigrants swung north through present-day Idaho, though that was the longer way west. But the Donner Party, braver or more foolhardy than the rest, chose an untried route that would shorten the distance. It did. It also subjected them to obstacles so formidable that it cost many of them their lives. Yet it preserved their names and the story of their travail down through history-crowded years - monuments unlike any others to the great wilderness adventure of conquering the West. No work of fiction has rendered this remarkable epic of ordeal with more vividness and power than Richard Rhodes' novel of the Donner Party, The Ungodly. The Ungodly is an unforgettable story of terrible hardship and awesome courage. It is the story of indomitable men and women in their bleakest hour - a story that increases our understanding of what kind of people made this nation and what a full and immeasurable price they paid.