The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Snow Mountian Passage by James D. HoustonDave Madden
James D. Houston. Snow Mountain Passage. Knopf, 2001. 317 pp. $24.00.
James D. Houston is, unfortunately, something of a secret to many readers. Each of his novels and many of his works of nonfiction, in particular Californians (1982), have attentively explored the landscape and culture of the Golden State. In Snow Mountain Passage, Houston examines the incident, two years before the Gold Rush, which burned California into the consciousness of the nation: the nightmare of the Donner Party. The novel traces that ill-fated journey from Illinois to the Sierra Mountains in 1846, centering on the experiences of James Frazier Reed, one of the leaders of the expedition. During a dispute with a teamster in Nebraska, Reed kills the man, is banished from the wagon train, and is forced to wander ahead of the party, arriving in California months before the others. There he is dragged into California’s war of independence from Mexico and must delay for months the rescue of his family. Punctuating the narrative are chapters that emerge from the recollections of Patty, Reed’s younger daughter, who at eighty-two years old looks back on her life and assesses her experiences with a critical eye: "[My father] was a dreamer, as they all were then, dreaming and scheming, never content, and we were all drawn along in the wagon behind the dreamer, drawn along in the dusty wake." These chapters are marvels of narrative presumption and conveyed with rich lyricism and wry insight. Snow Mountain Passage is Houston’s most compelling novel for its sense of narrative sweep and luminous prose. The temporal shifts between 1846 and 1920 and pointed assessments of Californiana are deftly rendered. The novel is a testament to the powers of human will and the enduring ties of family devotion. [Dave Madden]