ALA Booklist (Thu Sep 01 00:00:00 CDT 2016)

Their land sold, livestock traded, and belongings bundled into groaning wagons, the Graves family has 1,900 miles to go. It's spring 1846, and Franklin and Elizabeth Graves ong with their nine children e headed west, trekking from their home in Lacon, Illinois, to Sutter's Fort, California. Months into the expedition, the family merges with the Donner and Reed parties; there's strength in numbers, and the Hastings Cutoff, a route south of the Great Salt Lake, is rumored to chop weeks from the increasingly backbreaking journey. That is, until winter falls early, notoriously trapping the families "less than one hundred miles" from their intended destination. In this concise collection of narrative poetry, Brown assumes the voice of 19-year-old Mary Ann Graves, nimbly straddling the unfathomably harsh realities of travel, starvation, and bloodshed through the imagined musings of a headstrong girl entranced by quilts, birds, and the beauty of the moon. With her refreshingly varied form and ever-earnest tone, Brown weaves a compelling story of suffering, sacrifice, and survival.

Kirkus Reviews

A fictional account of the Donner Party's ill-fated attempt to cross the Sierra Nevada in 1846.Looking for a better life in California, Franklin Graves decides to take his large family west from Illinois. Nineteen-year-old Mary Ann relates in verse their experiences on the wagon trail as they meet up with other families, including the Donners, and are eventually trapped in the mountains during a brutal winter. The historical Mary Ann Graves survived the ordeal, and her letters to a newspaper editor form the basis for the novel's details. Across four seasons, Brown uses words and form effectively to evoke the hopeful idealism, love, joy, and life-or-death terror they feel along the way. Words scatter and shake across the page "Inside the Wagon." As Franklin looks upon the Great Salt Lake, "a gloom of sour surrounds him." Short verses over several pages depict the drawn-out anguish of the starving, desperate travelers. The trip's horrific end is foreshadowed in "The Sound of Meat" when the last of the beef is gone and one man responds to a snapping branch: "He almost shot Charles / thinking he was food." An author's note puts the story in historical context, including the difference in the points of view of the white pioneers and the Native Americans whose land they were trespassing on. A solid introduction to a somber episode in American history. (dramatis personae) (Historical verse/fiction. 11-15)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Writing in verse from the fictionalized perspective of Donner Party survivor Mary Ann Graves, Brown (Caminar) chronicles the group-s ill-fated 1,900-mile westward journey to California that began in 1846. Bright-eyed innocence is quickly tempered by hardships on the trek from Illinois-a snake bite, death, and mounting worries-as the trip becomes interminable (-There is no wagon train,/ only families moving together, passing each other by,/ there is no help to be given/ there is only forward-). The cadence of the poems slows, becoming deliberate and labored, as Mary Ann is overcome by exhaustion, dehydration, and starvation, then picks up with ghastly speed as she gorges on raw deer meat in the wilderness. A wayward traveler stumbling through the brush is nearly mistaken for food, foreshadowing the party-s desperate means of survival while stranded in the mountains during a snowstorm. The gravity of the cannibalism, now synonymous with the Donner Party, is treated deftly, conveying Mary Ann-s visceral reactions without becoming steeped in grisly detail. As loss compounds loss, brevity and repetition (-I stitch... I stitch-) intensify key moments in a harrowing, exhausting trek. Ages 10-14. Agent: Tina Wexler, ICM. (Oct.)

School Library Journal (Thu Sep 01 00:00:00 CDT 2016)

Gr 7 Up-An informative and thought-provoking look at the people who settled the United States and the choices they made. Based on real people and events, this is a compassionate perspective of the highly criticized Donner Party. In 1846, Mary Ann Graves and her family left their home in Illinois to settle in California. The 19-year-old narrator shares her father's excitement for the adventure without romanticizing the hardships of trailblazing. Mary Ann cares for tired little siblings, journeys through the desert without enough water, and physically removes rocks and trees to create a path for the wagons. But the brave teenager and her fellow travelers are unprepared for the harshness of an early winter that leaves them stranded. The strong novel in verse uses beautiful, descriptive words to depict the vastness of the landscape and the emotional and mental toll of perpetual suffering. This is a well-crafted narrative in which readers get to know and empathize with Mary Ann as her adventure shifts to survival. However, it might be difficult to stomach the travelers' desperate choices: the book does not shy away from the Donner Party's well-known resort to cannibalism. VERDICT History and ethics teachers may want to consider this title for discussion with mature middle schoolers and high schoolers; the subject matter might be a tougher sell for pleasure reading. Elissa Cooper, Helen Plum Memorial Library, Lombard, IL