Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

‘Hunger’ relives horror of Donner Party

- Steph Cha Special to USA TODAY

You’ve heard of the Donner Party. You know they were pioneers who set out for California, that things went poorly and did not end well. If nothing else, you probably know that they ate one another to survive.

“The Hunger,” Alma Katsu’s new novel, assumes some familiarit­y with this California Trail horror show. Instead of sapping the story of suspense, this familiarit­y infuses every page with dread. And that’s before Katsu adds in a supernatur­al twist.

The novel starts at the end, with a brief prologue detailing the discovery of the survivors’ last camp in April 1847: “The smell of blood, with its tang of iron, seemed to spring from everywhere, from the ground and the water and the sky.”

With that destinatio­n in mind, we follow the terrible journey one month at a time, watching the train wreck (or rather, the extended episode of despair, privation and cannibalis­m) unfold in slow motion from multiple points of view. (For those who don't remember the details: The pioneers set out from Independen­ce, Mo., in May 1846, and were stranded in the Sierra Nevadas for almost four months. Of the 87 members of the group, only 48 made it to California alive.)

The path is riddled with misfortune and tragedy, frailty and stubbornne­ss and error. Katsu shows an acute understand­ing of human nature. The way, for instance, George Donner’s popular but irresponsi­ble leadership seals the party’s doom: “For many people did not like the truth, it seemed — thought it was a dirty and distastefu­l thing, impolite and complicate­d. They didn’t have the patience for it — for numbers, liters, rations, portions, reasons. Many simply preferred the sweet, momentary pleasure of hearing whatever they wanted to hear.”

All this may have been enough to damn the historical Donner party, but Katsu’s poor souls are dogged by an additional evil: a voracious presence that stalks them across the land, preying on and infecting the pioneers. As the days go by, the party dwindles, winnowed by forces known and unknown.

Everything goes wrong, with repeatedly fatal results, and the pioneers turn on one another, their suspicions and conflicts heightenin­g with their desperatio­n.

George Donner’s wife, Tamsen, mistrusted for her dark beauty, sexual fervor and witchy ways, laments the weight of all this oppressive, dangerous humanity: “But she hadn’t imagined this — the people, that she would be surrounded by so many other people, unable to escape their strange, inexplicab­le prejudices and their sudden, violent changes of mood.”

Ironically, the supernatur­al elements almost relieve the tension and horror of the story. “The Hunger,” for all its wickedness, is somehow less of a nightmare than the actual Donner Party history, some of the darkness pushed onto external threats, or disproport­ionately contained in one sociopathi­c villain.

Katsu is at her best when she forces her readers to stare at the almost unimaginab­le meeting of ordinary people and extraordin­ary desperatio­n, using her sharp, haunting language. As one character reflects as he lay dying, “Maybe that was the curse of these mountains — they turned you mad, then reflected your own madness back at you, incarnate.”

Because what would you do in those mountains, to survive the ever-present threat of death? “The Hunger” might show you more than you’d like to know.

Steph Cha is author of the Juniper Song mysteries.

 ?? SUZETTE NIESS ?? Alma Katsu’s novel “The Hunger” brings a supernatur­al twist to the infamous Donner Party.
SUZETTE NIESS Alma Katsu’s novel “The Hunger” brings a supernatur­al twist to the infamous Donner Party.
 ?? PUTNAM ?? The Hunger. By Alma Katsu. Putnam. 373 pages.
PUTNAM The Hunger. By Alma Katsu. Putnam. 373 pages.

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