Answer Creek

Well done. It's sad, scary, as well as uplifting. It felt like the author did some good research, which allowed for a good mix of fact and fiction. This felt pretty real and characters are well drawn. I stayed engaged and liked the ending for the most part. Recommended.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!

Sweeney, the author of the also excellent Eliza Waite, returns with a gripping story of loss, survival, and female strength. Answer Creek sets its fictional protagonist, Ada Weeks, among historical figures including Tamsen and George Donner, whose name now lends itself to macabre legend. Ada is traveling with a sizable group of emigrants bent on California when her adoptive parents are swept away in an ill-considered river crossing. She’s taken in by the Breen family, whose redoubtable matriarch, Margaret, has seven children including an infant who is nursing during the journey West. There are moments of delight, beauty and even transcendence: Ada glimpses one of the West’s most spectacular sights with newspaperman Edwin Bryant, for example, and falls in love with fellow emigrant Patrick Dolan. But the way becomes increasingly hard as the party moves westward even before the Breens, like the Donners, decide to try the shortcut known today as the “Hastings Cutoff” and spend the winter snowbound. Though Ada makes it through those searing months, she arrives in California with another thorny problem before her: having survived, how does one go on and build a life when everyone and everything familiar is gone?

Reading Answer Creek, I could feel the pioneer experience in a way I never had before. (I would have been exponentially more attentive in American history classes had Sweeney taught them.) Sweeney does such a masterful job of evoking the journey, from the shifting challenges of the landscape the emigrants move through to the emotional complications of being dependent for survival on people who were strangers months or even just weeks before. The epic sweep, the vast scale, of the trek is vividly felt, but so are the smallest of details, from the inevitable bickering among fellow travelers to the difficulties of dealing with menstruation while walking thousands of miles. And though Sweeney does justice to the horror of those snowbound months, they are just one segment of the novel’s physical and emotional journey, one aspect of its broader perspective.

Answer Creek’s historical figures are thoughtfully and accurately represented—no small feat given their number. Ada and J.R.R. Riddle, another fictional character who is a member of one of the rescue parties—are wonderfully imagined. They’re both wounded beings, individuals who have suffered great and transformative loss. Yet neither has lost the capacity to change, to hope, or explore the possibilities of the future. If I were traveling through unknown terrain to an equally unknown destination, I would be grateful for the resourcefulness as well as the companionship of such remarkable souls.

Ashley E. Sweeney recreates a cross-continental journey that makes social distancing and being in lock-down at home feel luxurious. Answer Creek is about endurance and survival.

Set in 1846-7 on the California-Oregon trail, the novel tells the story of Ada who travels across the continent with the Donner-Reed party.

Yes, the infamous, ill-fated, starving cannibals of history.

After the tragic death of Ada's parents, she was taken in by a Norwegian family who decide to move to California. Early in their journey, they impulsively drive their wagon into high water and are lost. Ada is next taken in by the Breen family.

Dyin's gonna get us all in the end, one way or t'other, she thinks. But dyin's not the hardest part. Livin's a lot harder than dyin' any day. ~from Answer Creek by Ashley E. Sweeney

Ada, one of the few fictional characters in the novel, has endured a lifetime of troubles over her brief nineteen years. As hardened as she is, she also has a tender heart, caring for children and women and giving medical care to the men.

The tale can rival any story of hardship I have read, from Polar explorers to concentration camps.

Staying home for two months? Running out of toilet paper, milk, and eggs?

This is nothing compared to living 124 days in an overcrowded cabin, buried in snow, starving, without heat or blankets or decent clothing.

Ada experiences the elements' extremes and the daily pain of sore feet, bug bites, sunburn, chapped skin, frozen extremities, hunger, and painful loss.

Ada survives, but what kind of life can she have, linked as she is to the cannibalism of the Donner party? Luckily, a man named Riddle takes her to Answer Creek where she can heal and find a new life.

Sometimes, it's all we can do to hold it together, she thinks. And over and through it all, we've got to forgive ourselves, and others, over and over and over again. ~from Answer Creek by Ashley E. Sweeney

I was swept into the novel by the beautiful, descriptive writing. Ada is a strong, appealing character who is easy to relate to. The novel gains momentum, from the early beauty of the plains and the impressive natural formations of the West to the privations and life-threatening brutality of mountain winter. It was a joy to read.

I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

""Wagons, HO!" is the rallying cry at dawn, and again after nooning. "Gee, haw, walk on, steady now," these, too, are trail words." Oh, the hopes and dreams the pioneers who embarked on the Oregon-California trail had. The visions of the "promised land" that swirled in their minds as they packed their lives and treasured possessions into covered wagons. Along with all the possible foods and supplies they should need to make the 2,200 mile trek. They are aware of the dangers and hazards but there's a future ahead and sheer determination will drive them through. Nothing could possibly deter them from their destination....then reality hits and the journey becomes one of sheer will to reach the California paradise. Not all who embark are fortunate enough to see the final journey's end. This is the story of Ada Weeks and her grueling pilgrimage across the western frontier. The story of a fictional character placed in the middle of the true, ill-fated, Donner Party expedition. I remember learning about this infamous story in school and how horrible it sounded for people to have had to endure what they did. Ashley Sweeney took me back through time and brought me into the midst of the wagon train traveling west. She so descriptively writes the reality of how it was. I was struggling and suffering right along with Ada. Nothing in my prior imagination came close to how much endurance and strength this would have taken. She strips away the "romanticism" of pioneering and traveling across the plains and mountains of the unsettled western territory and brings the reality of it front and center. "Ada's boots flap, slap, feet oozing with open sores. It's one foot, then the other: six, twelve, eighteen miles per day through clouds of black gnats and dust." "Walking, Walking, Walking".

Ada is an amazing character. I really felt what she was going through. The trials of trail life with all it's devastation, loss, death, and hopelessness. The feelings she went through being stranded in the Sierras...desperation, everyone for themselves kind of survival. The hunkering in a snowbound cabin with nothing to eat but scraps of shoe leather and blankets. The horror of what the Donner Party and the pioneers went through is so vividly described by Ms. Sweeney in the pages. My mind struggled to grasp just how desperate it was. Ada's conscience and caring for the people touched my heart. Her desire to want to take care of the others was filled with compassion. The delirium of being so cold that she couldn't even think made me feel like I wanted to lay down in the snow and just go to sleep. Ada brought so much to the true story and what it was like. Her character revealed more truth to what really happened than what the sensationalized news accounts were about. I learned so much about this event.

I truly had an experience reading this novel. One that I will keep in my heart for what the early pioneers went through to make their hopes and dreams happen. It also gave me an appreciation for how much detail and research Ms. Sweeney put into this novel. It's one that is so well written. This book is a great reason why I love historical fiction. I was taken back into the setting and into a historical event as though I were living it myself. It's an intense, extraordinary and riveting account of the events that took place on the Donner Party wagon train to California.

I want to thank Netgalley and Ms. Sweeney for the great opportunity and honor of reading this novel. It most certainly is a five star plus read for me. All thoughts and opinions in this review are my heartfelt own.

I was not expecting to like this book as much as I did. The only reason being that I had read another book that is along the same lines as this one. The wagon train from Missouri to California. While this one is quite a bit different and delves into things that the other did not, both are great books. This book literally had me holding my breath in places.

What would you do to survive? To live or allow others to live. When you are surrounded by death everyday and have such limited choices. What would you do? I don’t think any of us knows unless we are faced with the desperate, horrific, unheard of, challenges that these people where faced with. Day in and day out they marched on. So many didn’t make it. Such heartache. So much death and despair. Then to choose to go a different route and be stranded for months on end with nothing to eat, nothing to keep you warm, nothing to assure you that things will get better. Life during these times were so awful yet many people chose to go west. To go where they thought life would be better. Life would be easier. Giving not thought to what they would face.

Ada was only nineteen years old and had already had a lifetime of loss. A lifetime of heartache. She didn’t need anymore yet here she was facing the worst life imaginable. Stranded on a snowed over mountain with people who became her family. Friends who she thought would last a lifetime. A love she looked forward to seeing through. She had no idea what lay ahead for her. For any of them. Ada wanted a life, a family.

This book is so well written you will feel like you are right there in this wagon train heading west. The tiredness, the dust, the sickness and sadness. Losing friends to such horrible accidents. You will feel the freezing cold of the many feet of snow covering the mountain. The hunger from not having anything to eat. The pain of losing more than you ever thought imaginable. This story brought out so many feelings for me. From some laughter and deep sadness. Emotions that will stay with me for a good while every time I think of what these people endured. This author did a wonderful job with the descriptions in this book. You will love the characters, cry with them, laugh with them and feel the emptiness they felt. The hopelessness that some felt. The desperation to live. Sometimes we do things we never ever thought possible just to survive. Don’t judge until you have walked a mile in their shoes.

Thank you so much to #NetGalley, #SheWritesPress, #AshleyESweeney for the ARC of this book. This is my own true review.

I gave it a big 5 stars and a very high recommendation.. Enjoy with an open mind and open heart.

This was a great piece of historical fiction due to the well-developed characters and the author's ability to accurately write about the events of the Donner Party's journey. The character of Ada was written in such a developed and historically accurate way that she could have easily been part of the real Donner Party. When the reader forgets that they are reading fiction, the author has written a brilliant piece of historical fiction.