The year was 1846. The Donner Party set out for California in a wagon train, a trip that usually takes between four and six months. When winter set in, they became snowbound in the Sierra Nevadas. They food supplies became low, along with their health and spirits, and some, it is believed, resorted to cannibalism.

Searching for Tamsen Donner is about Gabrielle Burton’s quest to find the truth about Tamsen Donner, who was a stoic pioneer woman who saw her children to safety but stayed with her dying husband at the cost of her own life. For Burton, Tamsen’s story is fascinating in its own right. It had long seemed something more: the story of a woman’s life writ large, one whose impossible balancing of self, motherhood, and marriage spoke to Burton’s own experience.

Maureen Corrigan reviewed Searching for Tamsen Donner on NPR's Fresh Air earlier this year. Maureen gave the book a great review, and just today she named it to her list of her favorite books of the year.  Read (or listen) to the whole list at the link.