Pioneer Children on the Journey West

The short stories told by young people who did the long journey to the west with an incredible optimism, through all the difficulties on this trip. Very understandable written. The Comments by the author are on the point and important to hold the whole book together. The "Pioneer Children on the Journey" is a recommendation for everybody who lives somewhere between the east and the west coast. Thank you for writing it.

Many of us with family histories in the west have visited Sutter's Fort or visited the Donner Historic Monument and read about Patty Reed's doll. But this book, with its first-person accounts of the journey west from the children's perspective, is altogether a different story. The incredible resiliency of the children who made the trip still haunts me. The children had no choice but to make the journey; their parents had a dream and the children had to follow. One entry tells the story of two young brothers who are left in the mountains, with a rifle, to fend for themselves for several weeks while their father takes the rest of the family down to Lassen Ranch and safety. The boys had to hunt for food, worry about Grizzly bears and wonder how long it would be before their father returned. It presents such a stark contrast to today's children who need videos to survive a trip to the grocery store in the family SUV that it's almost a social commentary without actually being one. Each story is unique and poignant and Werner does a fine job of linking the stories by adding historic contexts and narratives. An awesome amount of research must have gone into finding long faded documents and scraps of writings that became the heart of this book. This book helps "round out" the exciting history of the west and will remain a permanent resident on my bookshelf along with other notable "western" books like, Up and Down California in 1860-1864: The Journal of William H. Brewer, Fourth Edition, with Maps and McPhee's Assembling California.