A ship gets pinned in Antarctic ice. A young bride sets out on foot through the Sierra Nevada to save herself and her family. Both happened, and both make for gripping books. Start with Alfred Lansing’s Endurance if you want an expedition story. Pick Daniel James Brown’s The Indifferent Stars Above if you’d rather follow a family through the Donner Party’s ordeal.
On November 12, the National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for parts of California’s Sierra Nevada, including Donner Peak. Seeing that name in a modern forecast is a reminder of how much the weather could decide for the people Brown writes about. The five nonfiction books below follow people who faced snow, ice or extreme cold, from an Antarctic crew whose ship was crushed to schoolchildren caught on the open prairie.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
1. Endurance by Alfred Lansing
Start here for an expedition story. Ernest Shackleton sets out in 1914 intending to cross Antarctica. His ship becomes trapped in pack ice, and for months the crew waits to see what the pressure will do to the hull. Once the ship is crushed, the men have to find a way off the ice and across open water.
Lansing draws on crew diaries and interviews with survivors, so the suspense comes from what the men could see and know at each stage. A stretch of open water can look like a way out one day and a barrier the next. The book is especially good at showing the work of keeping a crew together while the plans keep shrinking, from crossing a continent to finding somewhere solid to stand.
2. The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown
Start here for a family’s ordeal. Sarah Graves leaves Illinois for California in 1846 with her family and new husband. They join the emigrants now known as the Donner Party and become stranded in the Sierra Nevada. Graves is among the small group who leave the camps on foot in search of help.
Following Graves gives Brown room to dwell on what it costs to leave when people you love are still waiting behind. The possibility of rescue depends in part on a trek that could kill the people undertaking it. If you already know the broad outline of the Donner Party’s story, read this for the details that make the stakes personal, including who can attempt the crossing and who must wait. The book covers starvation and cannibalism.
3. Touching the Void by Joe Simpson
Read this for a climbing memoir that narrows to two people and a rope. Joe Simpson and Simon Yates reach the summit of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. Simpson breaks his leg on the descent. As darkness and a storm close in, Yates tries to lower him to safety, working with very little information about what’s happening below him.
Simpson’s account makes the distance between two people feel enormous. A rope connects the climbers, but it can’t tell either man what the other can see or whether he can still move. The book’s perspective makes it easy to follow the decisions even if you’ve never climbed.
4. The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin
Read this if you want the storm itself at the center of the story. On January 12, 1888, a sudden blizzard swept across the northern Great Plains. Children were at school when the weather turned, and teachers faced a terrible choice about whether to keep them inside or try to get them to shelter elsewhere.
Laskin moves among several families, so the same storm becomes a series of different emergencies. A route someone had walked countless times could become unrecognizable in blowing snow. The book also follows the forecasters, giving readers a wider view of the storm while the people on the prairie have to act on whatever they can see from the schoolhouse door. The book describes the deaths of children.
Find The Children’s Blizzard on Amazon!
5. Alive by Piers Paul Read
Read this for a group survival story with difficult decisions at every turn. In October 1972, a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team along with friends and relatives crashed high in the Andes. Survivors took shelter in the broken fuselage, rationed what little food they had and faced an avalanche while still stranded.
The wreck offers some protection from the cold, but every day spent there makes the question of leaving harder. Read follows the people who consider crossing the mountains for help as well as those who have to stay behind. As in Brown’s book, the story deals directly with starvation and cannibalism.
If you’d rather spend your next snow day solving a fictional crime, try 7 Snowbound Mysteries Where No One Can Leave.
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook
Discover more from Books of Brilliance
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
