THE SNOW FELL THREE GRAVES DEEP

In the spring of 1846, a large caravan set out from Springfield, Illinois, seeking land and fortune in California.

Some of the families knew each other; most of them did not. They traveled together for safety and tolerated each other as individual personalities and ambitions become apparent on the trip. The narrators are so numerous that it is difficult to keep track of them all; among them are three members of the Reed family—teenage Virginia, dubbed “the Princess”; young Patty, “the Angel,” whose sections are addressed to God; and their father, James, who set his sights on leadership and faster travel via a shortcut. Other characters include a woman dubbed “the Scholar,” who is attached to her books; an orphan teen who joins the party along the way; and a German man who loses his faculties as one of the last survivors. Another narrator who outlasts the rest is the impersonal Hunger, whose familiarity with human longing explains the extreme behavior of the travelers. This historical narrative reads like a thriller, with nature, arrogance, ignorance, and greed as the villains, and it focuses on White settlers without glorifying them. The two Miwok vaqueros who serve as guides for a portion of the journey leave readers wanting more Indigenous voices; their presence, though, adds to the title’s poignancy as an exploration of the inhumanity involved in Westward expansion.

This mature corrective to cultural mythology horrifies and edifies.