Snow Mountain Passage
by James D. Houston
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Snow Mountain Passage is a powerful retelling of the most dramatic of our pioneer stories—the ordeal of the Donner Party, with its cast of young and old risking all, its imprisoning snows, its rumors of cannibalism. James Houston takes us inside this central American myth in a compelling new way that only a novelist can achieve.The people whose dreams, courage, terror, ingenuity, and fate we share are James Frazier Reed, one of the leaders of the Donner Party, and his wife and four show more children—in particular his eight-year-old daughter, Patty. From the moment we meet Reed—proud, headstrong, yet a devoted husband and father—traveling with his family in the "Palace Car," a huge, specially built covered wagon transporting the Reeds in grand style, the stage is set for trouble. And as they journey across the country, thrilling to new sights and new friends, coping with outbursts of conflict and constant danger, trouble comes. It comes in the... show less
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If you've watched documentaries about the Donner Party (canabalism!), then you'll want to read this book. I especially liked the narrative of the surviving daughter. how I admire these pioneers
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Author Information
28+ Works 3,971 Members
James D. Houston is the author of "Continental Drift" & six other novels, & of several nonfiction works, including "Farewell to Manzanar", coauthored with his wife, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. (Publisher Provided) James D. Houston was born in San Francisco, California on November 10, 1933. He received a bachelor's degree in drama from San Jose State show more College and a master's degree in American literature at Stanford University. During his lifetime, he wrote nine novels as well as nonfiction books and essays. His works include Bird of Another Heaven, Snow Mountain Passage, and Farewell to Manzanar. His second novel, Gig, won the Joseph Henry Jackson Award for Fiction. He taught writing part-time at numerous universities including the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Hawaii, the University of Oregon, the University of Michigan, George Mason University, and San Jose State University. He died due to complications of cancer on April 16, 2009 at the age of 75. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- James Frazier Reed (as James Reed); Martha J. 'Patty' Reed
- Important places
- USA; California, USA; Sierra Nevada Mountains; Truckee Lake, Nevada, USA
- Important events
- Donner Party (1846 | 1847)
- Epigraph
- Think of America, I told myself this morning. The whole thing. The cities, all the houses, all the people, the coming and going, the coming of children, the going of them, the coming and going of men and death, and life, the ... (show all)movement, the talk, the sound of machinery, the oratory, think of the pain in America and the fear and the deep inward longing of all things alive in America.
—William Saroyan,
in The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze - Dedication
- To my father and mother, who brought their dreams to this western shore
- First words
- Last night I dreamed again about my mother.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The tiny curve of light shifts across the surface like a river finding its way to the sea.
- Blurbers
- Kittredge, William; Starr, Kevin
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Statistics
- Members
- 236
- Popularity
- 137,391
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.25)
- Languages
- English, German
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 2
