In 1847, the Donner party resorted to eating human flesh to survive entrapment at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains. They became infamous almost instantly, with hundreds of books, stories, and interviews exploring their misery. None of them tell the extraordinary story from the first-person point of view of the female survivors.

Until now.

Three women yearned to make better lives in California:

Nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Graves set out west with her family in search of a home that would be free of disease like the ague that had afflicted her mother and sisters for years. If she met a handsome guy along the way, well, she wouldn’t complain. As the belle of the Donner party, she certainly had plenty of interest.

Peggy Breen had just given birth to her seventh child, but she wasn’t afraid of the two-thousand-mile journey toward prosperity. She’d take care of her children and honor her husband along the trail, because that’s what women of faith did. But when supplies became limited, her giving heart and her mother’s instinct were at odds.

Virginia Blackstone Reed, the thirteen-year-old daughter of the group’s leader, set out in search of adventure, riding her sassy palomino pony alongside the largest double-decker wagon anyone had ever seen. As the adopted daughter of the most influential and prosperous man in the wagon train, she had no idea at the start that her polarizing father with his ostentatious wealth would pave the way for their future devastation.

By the time these women and the rest of the party reached the Sierra Nevada mountains after taking an unproven “shortcut,” they were already two months late. They had lost people, oxen, mules, and livestock they couldn’t survive without. Then the snow began to fall.

And it didn’t stop.