Snow Mountain Passage

<em>Snow Mountain Passage</em> is a powerful retelling of our most dramatic pioneer story--the ordeal of the Donner Party. Through the eyes of James Frazier Reed one of the group's leaders and the imagined Trail Notes of his daughter Patty we journey along with the ill-fated group determined at all costs to make it to the California territory. <br> James Reed is a proud headstrong yet devoted husband and father. As he and his family travel in the Palace Car a huge specially built--and ultimately cumbersome--covered wagon they thrill to new sights and cope with conflict and constant danger. Yet when a fight between Reed and another driver ends in death Reed is exiled from the group and heads over the mountains alone. The fate of the other families including Reed's wife and four children is sealed when they set out across a new untested route through the Sierra--their final mountain pass. Arriving at the foothills just as the snows start to fall they are left stranded for months--starving freezing and battling to survive--while Reed journeys across northern California trying desperately to find means and men for a rescue party. <br> An extraordinary tale of pride and redemption <em>Snow Mountain Passage</em> is a brilliantly imagined and grippingly told story straight from American history. <p/>*National Bestseller <br>