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We have 1 items in our Catalogue that match your search for
9780803222854.
Searching for Tamsen Donner
by
Gabrielle Burton
( Hardback)
ISBN:
9780803222854
Publisher:
University of Nebraska Press
Price:
£20.99
Published in UK:
25/02/2009
Please Note:
This book is imported to special order and will take approx 3 weeks to come into stock.
Tamsen Donner. For most the name conjures the ill-fated Donner party trapped in the snows of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1846–47. Others might know Tamsen as the stoic pioneer woman who saw her children to safety but stayed with her dying husband at the cost of her own life. For Gabrielle Burton, Tamsen’s story, fascinating in its own right, had long seemed something more: the story of a woman’s life writ large, one who’s impossible balancing of self, motherhood, and marriage spoke to Burton’s own experience. This book tells of Burton’s search to solve the mystery of Tamsen Donner for herself. A graceful mingling of history and memoir,
Searching for Tamsen Donner
follows Burton and her husband, with their five daughters, on her journey along Tamsen’s path. From Tamsen’s birthplace in Massachusetts to North Carolina, where she lost her first family in the space of three months; to Illinois, where she married George Donner; and finally to the fateful Oregon Trail, Burton recovers one woman’s compelling history through a modern-day family’s adventure into realms of ultimately timeless experiences.
Review Quote:
“Searching for Tamsen Donner is audaciously ambitious and utterly original. Gabrielle Burton, back in the day, was one of our country’s most dedicated first-wave feminists, mother of five children, and wife to an endlessly tolerant husband. Decades ago, obsessed by the life of Tamsen Donner, Burton bundled the lot of them into a station wagon and retraced that doomed pioneer’s footsteps--across our great plains and up into the treacherous mountains, where, with so many of the Donner party, Tamsen met her tragic end. This memoir combines--successfully!--domestic, historic, and mystical concerns that bind together our brave but heartbreakingly fragile nation. It’s just a terrific read.”--Carolyn See, author of Making a Literary Life
