To Stay Alive: Mary Ann Graves and the Tragic Journey of the Donner Party

by Skila Brown

Overview

Told in riveting, keenly observed poetry, a moving first-person narrative as experienced by a young survivor of the tragic Donner Party of 1846.

The journey west by wagon train promises to be long and arduous for nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Graves and her parents and eight siblings. Yet she is hopeful about their new life in California: freedom from the demands of family, maybe some romance, better opportunities for all. But when winter comes early to the Sierra Nevada and their group gets a late start, the Graves family, traveling alongside the Donner and Reed parties, must endure one of the most harrowing and storied journeys in American history. Amid the pain of loss and the constant threat of death from starvation or cold, Mary Ann’s is a narrative, told beautifully in verse, of a girl learning what it means to be part of a family, to make sacrifices for those we love, and above all to persevere.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763678111
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	10/11/2016
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d)
Lexile:	860L (what's this?)
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Skila Brown has an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of the novel Caminar and the picture book Slickety Quick: Poems about Sharks, illustrated by Bob Kolar. Skila Brown lives in Indiana with her husband and their three children.

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/08/2016
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.)

Publishers Weekly

09/01/2016
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

School Library Journal

2016-07-26
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)

Kirkus Review

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...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.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

In this compelling verse novel, Brown (Caminar, rev. 3/14) imagines the Don- ner Party’s harrowing survival tale as experienced by nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Graves, a real-life member of the expedition...fascinating back matter (including a pho- tograph of Mary Ann taken thirty years after the book’s events) fills in historical details and separates fact from fiction. A nuanced and haunting portrayal of the indomitable human spirit.
—Horn Book (starred review)

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...A solid introduction to a somber episode in American history.
—Kirkus Reviews

This is a well-crafted narrative in which readers get to know and empathize with Mary Ann as her adventure shifts to survival...History and ethics teachers may want to consider this title for discussion with mature middle schoolers and high schoolers.
—School Library Journal

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.
—Booklist

In Brown’s lyrical novel in verse, Mary Ann is the ideal narrator for the imminent tragedy...[her] reticence to discuss in clinical detail how their party was forced to obtain nourishment is realistic, making this a tale of brave sacrifice rather than a historical horror story...Readers of Wolf ’s Titanic verse novel The Watch That Ends the Night (BCCB 10/11) will find this portrayal of tragedy equally moving.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

This would be a good choice for a fiction/nonfiction pairing in a study of the settling of the American West.
—School Library Connection

Riveting, sensitive, and conveying tremendous courage perseverance, and the will to live, this work of historical fiction is outstanding in every regard.
—Day (syndicated from Kendal Rautzhan "Books to Borrow"

From the Publisher