Sarah - All The Book Blog Names Are Taken’s Reviews > Searching for Tamsen Donner > Status Update

“Tamsen Donner, the woman who lived large and loved well, and did it with her family, started us on that road…”

Please just stop. You truly literally know almost nothing about this woman’s thoughts or feelings outside of her surviving letters, of which almost none Were written during the trip.

“I was Tamsen’s grave, connected in the bone to her because I had chosen her, and although my intentions were honorable, my fear was that my lack of skills and self-doubts might lead me to not imagine her life truly, burying her even deeper.“

How delusional.

Oh wonderful, the author has decided to give up smoking here at ‘Tamsen’s tree’ at the Alder Creek site.

“I felt so sad looking at the big rock I thought maybe Tamsen was buried there.“

Oh, for goodness sake.

But you have no right to just decide what you’d like to think happened. You are not a descendent of any of the families involved in this tragedy. You are completely obsessed and are projecting yourself onto this woman who lived over 150 years before you.

“Although keseberg said, Tamsen died at the log cabin by the rock, for a long time I liked to think she started out over the mountains and perished there - in truth, so much mystery and murkiness surrounded her decision to stay with her husband, her last weeks, and the circumstances of her death, I didn’t like to think about her death at all; Especially I did not want her to have come to an ignominious end.”

Why does this lady think that Tamsen Donner will somehow provide whatever meaning to her life that she’s looking for? Blah blah it’s so hard to be a writer and a mother blah blah. The parallels are quite a stretch, but the author keeps reaching.

“I yearned to see a picture of Tamsen Donner, but more than that, I yearned for something beyond broken artifacts, something that would have direct meaning for my own life.”

Get a fucking grip.

I don’t understand so many things about this book. Why did she wait 30 years to write this book? She just says on this page she doesn’t know if they ever changed the caption at the Donner museum on one of the exhibits about a wagon wheel. Did she not at least do any checking into these places 30 years after her trip to see if they were still the same? I don’t understand.

Good Lord, this woman is the most judgmental and condescending and arrogant woman. I’ve read in a long time. They’ve just arrived at Truckee Meadows, which is now Reno. She’s judging the fact that the motel sign offers weddings, and why would people get married at a motel, I couldn’t imagine, blah blah.