#ya prose

★★★★
To Stay Alive: The story of Mary Ann Graves and the Tragic Journey of the Donner Party was a very emotional read. Just like the title says, the story is incredibly tragic, but it is told so beautifully. The prose is situated on the page in a way that you can almost get an idea of what Mary Ann and other pioneers felt while they were making the journey West. Even the really disturbing parts about cannibalism and all the death were still somehow beautifully conveyed. I don’t read a lot of historical fiction, or fiction written in prose, but this book has inspired me to read more. I think the author choosing to tell this story in prose was the right move, it was a really heavy story, but it felt a little less so because of the way it was written—I don’t know if I could have made it through 300+ pages of this story written any other way.