Left Hand Turn: A Story of the Donner Party Women

Few women in history have suffered as did those in the Reed-Donner Party. In this epic crossing of a continent, they were forced to face almost insurmountable suffering, hardship and tragedy. Beguiled by a false picture of an easy trek to a land of perpetual sunshine and freedom from want and disease, a group of well-to-do families left comfortable homes in Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky in April of 1846. A year later, the last of a horror-haunted remnant of the wagon train staggered or were carried into Sutter's Fort to remake their shattered lives. Beginning with their disastrous turn from the main Oregon-California trail at Little Sandy Creek, tragedy rode with the twenty wagons taking the perilous Hastings' short cut. The party chopped their way through the trackless mountains of Utah; they dragged across the waterless salt flats of the Great Salt Lake, losing cattle and wagons and time. The Nevada desert brought further losses of men, equipment and food. Finally reaching the formidable Sierra Nevada Mountains far too late in the year, they made a last desperate effort to climb over the summit. They were trapped at what became known as Donner Lake by an unseasonable, unrelenting snow storm. They were without shelter or enough food to survive the long winter. LEFT HAND TURN is a story concerning the struggles of three women, Tamsen Donner, 45; Margaret Reed, 32, Mary Ann Graves, 19; and Margaret's two daughters, Virginia, 12, and Patty, 8, and how each reacted to the hardships, suffering, starvation and cannibalism. Taught to comply with decisions made by their - trained to follow, not to lead - they could only fight desperately to survive. Of the party, a little more than half survived. That any survived is the miracle.