Answer Creek: A Novel of the Donner Party - Paperback

by Ashley E. Sweeney (Author)

From the award-winning author of Eliza Waite comes a gripping tale of adventure and survival based on the true story of the ill-fated Donner Party on their 2,200-mile trek on the Oregon-California Trail from 1846 to '47.

Nineteen-year-old Ada Weeks confronts danger and calamity along the hazard-filled journey to California. After a fateful decision that delays the overlanders more than a month, she--along with eighty-one other members of the Donner Party--finds herself stranded at Truckee Lake on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, stuck there for the entirety of a despairing, blizzard-filled winter. Forced to eat shoe leather and blankets to survive, will Ada be able to battle the elements--and her own demons--as she envisions a new life in California?

Researched with impeccable detail and filled with imagery as wide as the western prairie, Answer Creek blends history and hearsay in an unforgettable story of challenging the limits of human endurance and experiencing the triumphant power of love.

Author Biography

A native New Yorker, Ashley E. Sweeney is the winner of the Nancy Pearl Book Award and more than a dozen other awards for her previous novels, Hardland, Answer Creek, and Eliza Waite. The Irish Girl is based on her paternal great-grandmother's story of coming alone from Ireland to America in the late nineteenth century. Sweeney lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest and Tucson.