I’ve been reading Preston and Child for a couple of decades now and I’m excited to see that, in this book at least, they have returned to the style they used in book like Relic and The Ice Limit. In this story, a man approaches archaeologist Nora Kelly with the offer of a lifetime. He has in his possession, the journal of a distant family member, a woman who was part of the ill fated Donner Party. The group of settlers, stranded over winter in a mountain pass resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. While two the the party’s camps have already been thoroughly excavated, the third “lost” camp has never been found. A journal with the exact location of the lost camp is now in Nora’s possession, and not only will she and her team get the chance to find answers to questions 150 years in the making, they also learn that there may be millions of dollars in gold buried at the sight. This is the best kind of escapist reading and unlike other action/adventure stories, there are no swaggering male protagonists here (hooray!)