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Impatient with Desire

by Gabrielle Burton (Goodreads Author)

3.64 of 5 stars 3.64 · rating details · 414 ratings · 157 reviews

A great adventure.A haunting tragedy.

An enduring love.

In the spring of 1846, Tamsen Donner, her husband, George, their five daughters, and eighty other pioneers headed to California on the California-Oregon Trail in eager anticipation of new lives out West. Everything that could go wrong did, and an American legend was born.

The Donner Party. We think we know their story--p...more

Hardcover, 256 pages

Published March 9th 2010 by Voice (first published 2010)

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Jul 09, 2010 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Susan by: Tara

Shelves: historical-fiction

Thanks again to Tara, my friend who makes sure I never run out of good things to read.

“All that just to get here. All that grief and confusion and chicanery and betrayal and carelessness and death just to get us here to these dull, thudding, stuporous, barely noticeable deaths.”

“I am a school teacher doing life and death sums.”

Impatient with Desire is the fictionalized story of the very real and tragic Donner Party travels to reach California in 1846 and 1847. Written from the viewpoint of Tamse...more

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Feb 06, 2010 Theresa rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone!

Shelves: arc, early-reviewers, historical-fiction

I had never heard of the Donner Party nor knew anything about another way to travel west besides the Oregon Trail. So, when I sat down with this book, I had no expectations besides being entertained. I didn't expect Tamsen Donner to catch my heart and hold it through her journal entries and letters to her sister. My heart went out to the families and men that traveled in the party, and every time one died, I could feel the heartbreak and mounting concern that each one brought, as if I, too, was...more

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May 04, 2012 guiltlessreader rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: america, reads-2010, historical-fiction

Originally posted on Guiltless Reading

Not a trashy romance. Really.

The book in one sentence: Tamsen Donner recounts the ill-fated journey of 80+ pioneers through the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1846.

My thoughts: I received Impatient with Desire yesterday in the mail through the LibraryThing Early Bird Reviewers, and I got just a bit of an eyeroll from the hubby when he saw the title of the book. I've sort of sworn off trashy romance novels - and this is what this book seemed to be about - an ill...more

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Jun 26, 2010 Emily rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, usa

Nabokov once said (and I paraphrase heavily) that a true reader is a re-reader, so my main rating system on here has been based primarily on the question: would I re-read this? The short answer for "Impatient with Desire" is a flat no. But the answer to the *perhaps* more important question, "Did this book inspire a burning desire--an impatient one, you might say--inside me to read anything and everything on the subject at hand?" is an emphatic YES!

Burton's curiosity about the Donners led her t...more Nabokov once said (and I paraphrase heavily) that a true reader is a re-reader, so my main rating system on here has been based primarily on the question: would I re-read this? The short answer for "Impatient with Desire" is a flat no. But the answer to the *perhaps* more important question, "Did this book inspire a burning desire--an impatient one, you might say--inside me to read anything and everything on the subject at hand?" is an emphatic YES!

Burton's curiosity about the Donners led her to this interesting project--that is, to compile all known documents written by and about Tamsen Donner into a piece of creative non-fiction in the form of her diary--but it seemed to fall short of its lofty aims. The "diary" starts when the Donners are already trapped in the Sierra Nevada, and the reader learns of their tragic path to said wintery hellhole through flashbacks in Tamsen's diary. Talk about suspending belief that a woman nibbling at her ox skin rug for nourishment under 20 feet of snow with 4+ kids and a gangreneous husband in a hastily constructed tent-shanty felt compelled to document conversations verbatim between members of the wagon train four months prior. I mean, really.

I will say that, given my slight aversion to the medium (a faux diary of a real person?!), it did afford a few advantages, at least when it came to my emotional attachment to Tamsen & co. Towards the end when the rest of the party has been rescued or died and it's just Tamsen and George Donner left, him with his gangrene and her with her strong will, they exit their dank shanty to spend a few minutes in the glistening snow. Tamsen's memory flashes back to happier times: the day they met, their wedding day, the beginning of the Trail. Her memory of the 4th of July on the Trail--"America's 70th birthday"--and the joy all the pioneers felt as they danced and fiddled and made merry in their 19th century way made me tear up a little. To have all that hope and independence and freedom and joy, and to end up eating your neighbor's body in a frozen shack in the mountains thousands of miles from home? God, can you possibly imagine?(less)

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Nov 18, 2011 Cynthia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: great-reads

When I was young my family went on a road trip over the Sierra Nevadas making a stop in the mountains where the Donner party suffered so much during the winter of 1846. As we traveled my mom read aloud from the book "Ordeal by Hunger" and my interest in this tragic bit of history was kindled. This particular book is historical fiction written from the perspective of Tamsen Donner. It is known that she kept a journal, but it has never been found. The writing begins during that awful winter as Tam...more

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Aug 16, 2010 Cara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: about-real-people, fun-or-frivolity

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Picked this up from the new books display thinking it would be about love or something, but it's actually about the Donner Party.

It's a quick read and interesting. I never paid any attention to the Donner Party before, just had a vague idea that some of them ate each other or something. This book is a fictionalized diary of Mrs. Tamsen Donner and fills out their motivations and experiences on the journey west. They were pioneers, heading west during the age of Manifest Destiny, to claim free la...more Picked this up from the new books display thinking it would be about love or something, but it's actually about the Donner Party.

It's a quick read and interesting. I never paid any attention to the Donner Party before, just had a vague idea that some of them ate each other or something. This book is a fictionalized diary of Mrs. Tamsen Donner and fills out their motivations and experiences on the journey west. They were pioneers, heading west during the age of Manifest Destiny, to claim free land in California. Unlike most of those who went before them, this was a large party of many families, each with multiple wagons full of stuff and tons of children. When the going gets tough, the children and stuff become a huge burden, and the proliferation of opinions among the adults leads to squabbling, physical fighting, groups splintering off, and even death.

The turning point of the trip is the point where the men decide the group will take a 300-mile shortcut, against the advice of one man who had already been there and certainly against the wishes and judgment of Tamsen, who as a woman doesn't get a vote. They end up stuck in the mountains over winter in a few tiny tent/shacks they manage to improvise, slowly starving to death. Around March, after many have died, rescue parties start arriving and taking the able on out of the mountains. Somehow none of them manage to come with food or supplies to leave with those who aren't up to making the trip out, though, so they stay behind and continue to starve. This seems like kind of a big duh to me, but I guess they ran into troubles of their own and were lucky to make it there at all. Anyway, the older kids leave with one party, and the younger kids go with another, later when the weather is better. Tamsen starts off with them but then returns to be with her husband, George, who was the captain of the party. He sustained a nasty cut from a chisel a few months before, and the infection spread up his arm over the winter. One of the rescuers predicted that he wouldn't make it to California and urged Tamsen to go with them, but she went back anyway, unwilling to let him die alone. I found this very poignant, since by going back, she was very likely sentencing herself to die alone instead. What would I do in that situation? What is even the right thing to do? I don't know. If it was just a matter of leaving George behind or not, staying with him would seem a fairly obvious choice, but by staying, she was sending her three very small children off with strangers to make a perilous trek through mountains and possible new snow any time, when they had no strength from being on the edge of starvation all this time. It's a tough choice all around.

In the end, she stays with George through his last days and gives him a proper burial, and then sets off west herself, at least according to this fictional account. In reality, nobody knows what happened to her. Some think she was murdered. In any case, she didn't make it, and no trace of her or her writings was found.

Overall, I think this was a good book. The narrative was a little choppy, jumping around in time and assuming the reader already knew basically what happened and had at least a little knowledge of the party's route, which I didn't. But the writing was generally good, and the book humanized the people from a piece of history that I felt no connection to before. It wasn't a fun read, but I think it's good to read something a little serious once in a while. Also, I really enjoyed the deep, calm love between George and Tamsen Donner. Tamsen advises her daughters, and vicariously the reader, to choose a calm man. That really resonated with me. Yes, a calm man makes a good companion for a peaceful life.(less)

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Jun 01, 2010 Nicola rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: arc, own

Reason for Reading: The Donner Party has always intrigued me, as it does so many others.

The majority of this book focuses on the The Donner Party's journey, told through the eyes of Tamsen Donner in a journal format and a collection of letters to her sister; eventually the letters stop and the journal begins to be written to the sister. The story starts as the pioneers are hunkered down for the winter in the mountains but does not run in a linear format. Tamsen goes back to the days of her and G...more Reason for Reading: The Donner Party has always intrigued me, as it does so many others.

The majority of this book focuses on the The Donner Party's journey, told through the eyes of Tamsen Donner in a journal format and a collection of letters to her sister; eventually the letters stop and the journal begins to be written to the sister. The story starts as the pioneers are hunkered down for the winter in the mountains but does not run in a linear format. Tamsen goes back to the days of her and George Donner's meeting, she also tells her biography before she met George and does likewise for him. The story flips from the present winter conditions where they are trapped back to the day they decided to start their journey and the majority of the book is devoted to telling the tale of these pioneer's voyage along the trail, how they got off the usual path and ended up trapped in the mountains for winter.

Being told from Tamsen's point of view is unique; presenting a hardy, robust, adventurous female pioneer who often has more gumption than some of the men. One becomes attached to Tamsen right from the start. The author has done a wonderful job of creating a character that the reader is invested in and actually hopes for even when historically we know the terrible facts. It isn't until the very end that the cannibalism is dealt with and the author doesn't make a big deal out of it either. She shows how it may have come about. She also shows how three different families, in their own huts, may have handled and been affected by the terrible but life-saving, gruesome act. This part of the story is not sensationalized, it is only described in a few short pages, leaving much to the imagination.

This was a page-turner for me. A quick read, with short journal entries and letters it is so easy to just keep turning the pages! An eye-opening story which I think does the Donner Party a service in the eyes of history. With Tamsen Donner's real journal never having been found this is a story we will always wish we could have a glimpse of her eye-witness accounts and this book satisfies, bringing Tamsen Donner alive again as a brave and determined pioneer woman.(less)

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Apr 29, 2010 Elevate Difference rated it 5 of 5 stars

Impatient with Desire is the story of Tamsen Donner, now-legendary westward pioneer. Tamsen was forty-five when she set out on the California-Oregon Trail with her husband and five children in the spring of 1846. Stranded by early snows, Tamsen and the other Donner Party pioneers spent a harrowing four months in the Sierra Nevadas without supplies. Tamsen sent her daughters out with relief parties and stayed behind with her wounded husband; she died sometime in April 1847, leaving only her lette...more Impatient with Desire is the story of Tamsen Donner, now-legendary westward pioneer. Tamsen was forty-five when she set out on the California-Oregon Trail with her husband and five children in the spring of 1846. Stranded by early snows, Tamsen and the other Donner Party pioneers spent a harrowing four months in the Sierra Nevadas without supplies. Tamsen sent her daughters out with relief parties and stayed behind with her wounded husband; she died sometime in April 1847, leaving only her letters and a journal that was never recovered. Impatient with Desire is a recreation of that lost journal.

Burton’s meticulously researched account mingles her own prose with phrases from Tamsen’s extant letters, with engaging results. From her shelter in the Sierra Nevadas, Tamsen remembers her girlhood in Newburyport, her courtship and marriage with her second husband, the bustle of their preparations to move west, and the hardships of trail life. Burton captures the voice of this remarkable woman, a schoolteacher and botanist who traveled alone from Massachusetts to Illinois and left behind a spirited collection of letters to her sister Betsey. “In my lifetime people have sometimes wondered at my conduct, but they have never despised me,” Tamsen writes, thinking back over her travels. “And I shall never be despised.”

Tamsen’s independence does not go too far, however, in securing her voice on the trail. One of the most harrowing moments in Impatient with Desire is a campfire scene where the party’s men debate over whether or not to take the Hastings Cutoff, the ill-advised shortcut that ultimately left them stranded. Sitting beyond the circle of men with her journal on her lap, Tamsen records the fateful vote, convinced that no woman in the party would have agreed to the decision. Months later, searching for empty spaces in her filled journal, Tamsen muses, “You can write a whole book in the margins.” Tamsen’s marginalized pages remind us of marginalized voices: a “schoolteacher doing life and death sums,” Tamsen is at once a mother, wife, traveler, scribe, voteless companion.

Despite her exclusion from trail politics, Tamsen still maintains an equal companionship with her second husband George. The story of their marriage blends the objects and scenes of memory with the bleak mountain campsite. These vivid recollections—holidays and children’s birthdays, the decision to move West, the frenzy of preparations, and the excitement as the party sets out from Independence—bring Tamsen alive as a historical figure. Reminiscence finally yields to grim inventory as, in spare, elegant language, Tamsen records taking apart her family’s shelter, her botany collection, even her journal cover, for sustenance.

Burton’s Impatient with Desire is more evenly composed than her memoir about her cross-country journey in Tamsen’s tracks, Searching for Tamsen Donner. I began the book a bit skeptical about its valorization of the American frontier, and I kept reading because I wanted more Tamsen. Donner Party lore has often focused on the cannibalism of the pioneers (confirmed facts about the Donner Party’s struggles are notoriously scanty). Burton deftly negotiates this tale of outward struggle to bring us a story of inner survival as well. I read Impatient with Desire with a kind of grim fascination; Tamsen’s endurance and the powerful elegance of her narration stayed with me long after I finished the book.

Finely crafted and spellbinding in the calm pain of its heroine, Impatient with Desire is historical fiction at its best. Readers interested in women’s history, westward expansion, wilderness tales, and historical fiction will find much to ponder.

Review by Barbara Barrow(less)

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Mar 10, 2010 Tattered Cover Book Store added it

Shelves: from-the-indienext-list, jackie-recommends, staff-recommends

Jackie says:

This book covers the ill fated journey of the Donner Party in their quest for a new life in California. The narrator is Tamsen Donner, who documents the trip in a journal/letter written to her sister who stayed behind. While the Donners and their five daughters are the main focus, a lot of the story is about other members who joined and left the party for various reasons. Burton did a great deal of research on the historical facts, but the truth is that there is still a lot of myster...more

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Feb 04, 2010 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars

The 1840’s saw a massive migration to California by American pioneers, and none too notorious were a group of 87 individuals who became marooned in the Sierra Nevada by a blizzard. These people were known as the Donner Party and they became noted for their very taboo method of survival: cannibalism. The center of the party consisted of three families setting out from Springfield, Illinois in the spring of 1846. Their wagon train was later joined by other families when they met up with and branch...more The 1840’s saw a massive migration to California by American pioneers, and none too notorious were a group of 87 individuals who became marooned in the Sierra Nevada by a blizzard. These people were known as the Donner Party and they became noted for their very taboo method of survival: cannibalism. The center of the party consisted of three families setting out from Springfield, Illinois in the spring of 1846. Their wagon train was later joined by other families when they met up with and branched off from a larger wagon train at Little Sandy River.

The Donner party met with hardships when they broke off from the California Trail and, instead, followed a different path chronicled by a trail captain named Hastings. Despite many warnings from other travellers that the Hastings Cutoff was never actually travelled by Hastings and might be dangerous, the members of the Donner party decided to take this “short cut.” In the end, this short cut took three week longer causing the wagon train to blow through their supplies too soon and leaving them helpless when they were trapped by early snows in Nevada. For 4 months these travellers were stuck in two camps without food and supplies. Of the original 87, 48 survived, many by eating the bodies of those who had died.

Impatient with Desire is a historical fiction based on the events that occurred within that snowbound camp. Written from the perspective of Tamsen Donner, .this account creates a fascinating look into the circumstances that lead the Donners and their 5 daughters to travel to California and how they survived the horrific trip. Beginning as letters to her sister, Tamsen begins to keep a journal of the trail. Through her eyes, you are given glimpses into the psychological breakdown of her family and travelling companions, the choices made that led to the entire party being trapped by the snow, and the heartbreak of Tamsen watching her children starve and her husband die.

Burton writes that she chose her heroine for this story due to a “consuming interest” in Tamsen Donner over a period of several decades. Burton had made an “Oregon Trail of words” in her almost lifelong research into the Donner family and their fateful trip. She used historical facts whenever possible, but did take poetic license when the story required a dramatic flourish.
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Dec 27, 2009 Jackie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: work-review-related-reading

This book covers the ill fated journey of the Donner Party in their quest for a new life in California. The narrator is Tamsen Donner, who documents the trip in a journal/letter written to her sister who stayed behind. While the Donners and their five daughters are the main focus, a lot of the story is about other members who joined and left the party for various reasons. Burton did a great deal of research on the historical facts, but the truth is that there is still a lot of mystery surroundin...more

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Jun 29, 2012 Nattie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I thought that this was such a touching book. I've always heard of the Donner party, being that I'm a huge fan of "Wagons Ho!" books, but I never knew more than the basic details of the story. Even though the book is highly fictionalized, and we'll never know if any of it actually happened, I still felt like I got to know the Donner's and some of their party. I wish that I could know the real story. I felt a lot of things while reading this. I realize just how different people are today from tho...more

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Jun 26, 2012 CookieDemon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, goodreads-won-copies

How far would you go in order to survive?

*Full disclosure: I won an ARC of this novel from the author. I was not obligated to provide a review and all opinions expressed therein are my own.*

I have to say, that if I didn’t know otherwise, the immediate title of this book would imply it is some kind of chicklit or romantic novel. It isn’t by the way. This is actually historical fact written as fiction and is based on a part of American history that I know virtually nothing about, so I was keen to...more How far would you go in order to survive?

*Full disclosure: I won an ARC of this novel from the author. I was not obligated to provide a review and all opinions expressed therein are my own.*

I have to say, that if I didn’t know otherwise, the immediate title of this book would imply it is some kind of chicklit or romantic novel. It isn’t by the way. This is actually historical fact written as fiction and is based on a part of American history that I know virtually nothing about, so I was keen to read it and learn more. I have to say, as far as book covers go, this is utterly beautiful and would have caught my eye in a bookshop too.

The book chronicles the story of the Donner Party, pioneers who set out to California from Missouri in 1845 and were trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for months during the winter. This book is the imagined account of the real journal (unfortunately lost) written by Tamsen Donner, the wife of the party leader- and chronicles the trials, tribulations and ultimately the tragedies, that struck the group during their journey.

Some of the circumstances depicted in this book are genuinely horrific, which makes it a bit strange to say that I found the prose itself utterly beautiful. I was immediately drawn into this book, owing to the sense of despair and suffering of the individuals that seeps from the pages and their desperate struggle to stay alive, as well as some of the unimaginable choices they ultimately make in order to do so. Their sense of grief, confusion and hunger grips the reader, as well as a feeling of foreboding- you immediately realise that the story won’t have a happy ending- you just don’t fully understand why until events really begin to unfold, which does admittedly take a while as the book is quite slow-paced in places.

Tamsen as a character was conveyed as a strong, courageous individual- with opinions of her own at a time when perhaps women were cowed by their husbands and struggled to find their own voice. I also appreciated how the author conveyed a marriage of ‘equals’ between her and George Donner. I’m not sure how accurate this actually was, but it certainly added an interesting dimension to the story.

If I had to offer any criticisms of this novel it would be that I didn’t really like the first half of the title. I also found some of the jumps in time to be a bit confusing, though admittedly it added to the heightened sense of disorientation of the characters and as to where they were and what was happening to them. I was also left scratching my head with the large cast of characters and as to who was who on occaision and who had died and who hadn’t- a list of people at the beginning and their relationships to one another would have perhaps been advantageous in that respect.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in early American history, particularly in learning more about the pioneers, or in the history of emigration generally. This is an excellently written, poignant and evocative novel with a memorable heroine. The authors note at the back in talking about her personal quest to find out all she can about Tamsen Donner is really inspiring too.
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Jan 20, 2010 Kirsten rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book has an excellent story to tell (that of the Donner party), but ultimately the structure of the novel gets in its own way too much. At the beginning, there is too much telling and not enough showing (including some lists that are basically passenger manifests: make that a list of dramatis personae before the first chapter and be done with it!). Because the author chose to focus only on their time while trapped and snowbound (i.e. nothing was happening), much of the book is taken up with...more

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Jun 22, 2010 Andrea Dowd rated it 5 of 5 stars

Everyone likes a good survival story and everyone knows a little something about the Donner Party who trekked across the Great Plains, the Great Salt Lake, and through the snowy mountains of California, only to become an embarrassing and tragic story of cannibalism.

"Impatient with Desire" is based on true events, people, and actual letters that turned into a fictionalized diary/letter format. It works for the story because there has never been a fully-realized first-person account of the happeni...more

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Jan 30, 2011 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

"None of us knows what we'll do until we're tested" says George Donner to Tamsen Donner. That line speaks to the heart of this book, a fictionalized account of the Donner party, told from the viewpoint of Tamsen Donner, in the form of letters and her journal. These were good people, who made careful plans and prepared well, and yet it all went horribly wrong. It's easy for us to condemn their actions, but Burton's riveting account shows us what it might have been like to be there, how the unthin...more

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Jul 14, 2012 EBG rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I won this book through Goodreads Giveaways courtesy of the author herself Gabrielle Burton!

Thank you Ms Burton!

I am looking forward to reading it over the weekend. Await my review by end of the week...

----------- REVIEW -----------

I give this book 2.5 Stars

The book is about a group of people looking for a better life in the other side of the border (so they say), the story is set in the 19th century where most of the characters are based on real people - the American pioneers particularly the...more

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Feb 16, 2010 Jeff rated it 3 of 5 stars

Gabrielle Burton’s “Impatient with Desire” details the ill-fated emigration of the Donner party in 1846. The novel unfolds though journal entries and letters written by Tamsen Donner and provides an intimate perspective to one of the most notorious and mythologized chapters in American history.

I have to give props to Burton for creating an interesting fictional narrative out of the little-known and often contradictory facts about the Donner party history. Tamsen is a fascinating character – a st...more

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Jun 06, 2010 Beth rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a fictional account of the infamous Donner party and their westward bound expedition gone horribly wrong. The story is told through journal entries of wife/mother Tamsen Donner. I've just finished the galley version, so there could be some differences in the final copy. While I liked this book, I wanted to like it more. I found the timeline hard to follow, jumping around from the characters present circumstances, to various pasts, anywhere from two days prior to Tamsen's childhood, with...more

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Mar 21, 2011 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Growing up in San Jose, CA the Donner Party story was a staple in most of my history classes. Independent of those classes I'd often pick up a book or watch a movie about them, knowing the basics but still fascinated by the tale. At a very young age a family friend showed me the graves of the surviving members of the Reed family who had moved to San Jose. I remember having a striking thought, knowing so much about the horror they face - some made it out alive and prospered here in my own city. W...more

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May 12, 2010 Laura Stone Johnson rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is a novelized, first-person account of the Donner Party's disastrous journey west. Told from the point of view of Tamsen Donner as the winter months crawl by, the story is fairly interesting, but also a bit jumbled as the chapters (diary entries, for the most part)jump in time. There's also a confusing number of characters to try to keep track of. Author Burton says the fictionalization captures the human element, lost amid endless speculation and morbid joking about this doomed group. She...more

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Nov 24, 2010 Lisa B rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This is the fictional account of the Donnor Party's attempted trip over what became known as Donner's Pass that ended with many of the people dying. It's told through the eyes of Tamsen Donner, wife of George Donner. Gabrielle Burton creates wonderful characters that are extremely likeable. However, I wish that she had developed the entire journey instead of focusing on the time they're trapped by the snow storm and telling bits and pieces of brought them to that point in journal format. Ultimat...more

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Feb 19, 2010 Tara Chevrestt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, arc, 2010-release

Wow. What a tragic story. This novel is about the Donner party that left Illinois for California in 1846. Tamsen Donnor is the wife to the "captain" and it's thru her letters to her sister and her lapses into the past that readers live the tragedy of the trail again. Their problems don't stop at broken wheel axles and ornery oxen, rather more troubles arise from people not getting along than anything else. There is murder, abandonment, and a man named Hastings promising a short cut that turns ou...more

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Jul 29, 2010 Melissa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Unbelievable but true. I have always known about the Donner party expedition and the probable acts of cannibalism, but this book gives quite an interesting background of the Donner family and others on the fateful trip. They were not evil. They were forced survivalists. There was compassion and love demonstrated throughout and as a mother and wife, Mrs. Donner was devoted, loving, and protective. She placed her family first and sacrificed her very life for them. It is a moving, touching, hearbre...more

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Jul 22, 2010 Ab rated it 3 of 5 stars

Upon finishing this book, I immediately went to Wikipedia to find out who actually survived in real life, and what actually happened. It's a fascinating story, though rife with disagreements upon what actually happened while trapped on the mountain (according to children survivors years later). A compelling read, to be sure.

"An early emigrant named Lansford W. Hastings had gone to California in 1842 and saw the promise of the undeveloped country. To entice settlers he published a guide for pione...more Upon finishing this book, I immediately went to Wikipedia to find out who actually survived in real life, and what actually happened. It's a fascinating story, though rife with disagreements upon what actually happened while trapped on the mountain (according to children survivors years later). A compelling read, to be sure.

"An early emigrant named Lansford W. Hastings had gone to California in 1842 and saw the promise of the undeveloped country. To entice settlers he published a guide for pioneers titled The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California.[8:] He described a direct route across the Great Basin, which would bring emigrants through the Wasatch Mountains and across the Great Salt Lake Desert.[9:] Hastings had not traveled any part of his proposed shortcut until early 1846, on a trip from California to Fort Bridger. The fort was a scant supply station run by Jim Bridger and his partner Pierre Louis Vasquez, located in Blacks Fork, Wyoming. Hastings stayed at the fort to persuade travelers to turn south on his route.[8:] As of 1846, Hastings was the second of two men documented to have crossed the southern part of the Great Salt Lake Desert and neither had been accompanied by wagons.[9:][note 1:]

The most difficult part of the journey to California was the last 100 miles (160 km), across the Sierra Nevada. This mountain range contains 500 distinct peaks over 12,000 feet (3,700 m) high,[10:] and the eastern side of the range is extremely steep. Their height and proximity to the Pacific Ocean mean the mountains receive more snow than most other ranges in North America.[11:] Timing was crucial to ensure that after leaving the civilization of Missouri to cross the vast wilderness to Oregon or California, wagon trains would not be bogged down by mud created by spring rains, or massive snowdrifts in the mountains from September onwards, and their horses and oxen would have enough spring grass to eat.[12:]"

"Of the 87 people who entered the Wasatch Mountains, 48 survived. Only the Reed and Breen families remained intact. The children of Jacob Donner, George Donner, and Franklin Graves were orphaned. William Eddy was alone and most of the Murphy family had died. Only three mules reached California; the remaining animals perished. Most of the Donner Party members' possessions were discarded."(less)

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Mar 26, 2011 Caitlin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

I would not normally have chosen Impatient with Desire as a read. The cover is a bit prairie romance novel and the subject, the imagined journal of the wife of the leader of the Donner party, doesn't sound all that appetizing. I was invited to review this book by Rare Bird Lit and I am so very glad, otherwise I would've missed a great book.

Impatient with Desire is lots of things. It's epistolary. It's riveting. It's filled with dread and wonder and regret. It's a beautifully written impressionis...more

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Dec 01, 2010 Kristi rated it 3 of 5 stars

While the Donner Party story is alive and well in the history books, the view of it from Tamsen Donner's eyes has not been seen, until now. This fictionalized account of Tamsen's life, told in alternating past and present sections. Wife of the leader of the traveling party, George Donner, Tamsen recounts growing up, her courtship with George, and the decisions to move to California and what led to their snowy entrapment in the Sierra Nevada mountains. An infamous journey wrought with interperson...more

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Feb 04, 2011 Brooke rated it 3 of 5 stars

You know when you're watching a movie and something particularly ominous happens, and you find yourself thinking, "There's no way this is going to end well." But you keep watching because, you never know.
It's nothing like that in this book. As it unfolds, you KNOW it's not going to end well. I mean, you already know what happens. The fact that the Donner Party and their fate are so widely known steals a lot of this book's thunder. The reader plods on, page after page, with an alarmed helplessnes...more

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Dec 21, 2010 Jennifer Russ rated it 1 of 5 stars

I found this hard to get through and I ended up just skimming the pages. The book revolves around the infamous Donner family as they travel across the US to California. It is told by Tamsen Donner through journal entries and letters to her sister. I found it hard to follow as it skipped all over the place from past to present and a lot of it was repetitive. The inside flap describes the book as "What really happened in the four months the Donners were trapped in the mountains so I was expecting...more

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Aug 01, 2010 Jen rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was yet another case in my life when "just one more chapter" turned into a sleep-deprived morning after. Not too sleepy, as this novel is slim at just under 250 pages. Simple elegant prose yet very engaging. Like other historical fiction based on tragic events, you know to an extent how the work will end, but in this case the descriptive text and relationships between characters kept me hooked. Burton addresses some of the most gruesome and sad moments of the Donner party while letting...more

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About Gabrielle Burton

Gabrielle Burton, awarded an MFA in screenwriting from the American Film Institute, currently splits her time between her Buffalo home and Los Angeles, where she is involved with her daughters' Five Sisters Production Company. Burton is the author of Heartbreak Hotel as well as the nonfiction work I'm Running Away from Home, But I'm Not Allowed to Cross the Street: A Primer on Women's Liberation (...more

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