To Truckee’s Trail

Celia Hayes
Booklocker.com Inc. (2007)
ISBN 9781601452528
Reviewed by Tyler R. Tichelaar for Reader Views (1/08)

“To Truckee’s Trail” by Celia Hayes is described on its front cover as “The Greatest Adventure…Never Told.” It is definitely a fantastic story, and more importantly, a true story of the Stephens-Townsend wagon train that crossed the continent in 1844 to reach California. Why the story has not been told sooner is hard to say. Perhaps this journey was not as dramatic as that of the Donner Party that had to resort to cannibalism a few years later, but the Stephens-Townsend party apparently set the trail, the pass through the mountains known as “Truckee’s Trail” and like the Donner Party, they also had to survive the winter in the mountains—in fact, the Donner Party ended up using one of the cabins the Stephens-Townsend party used.

Besides not being as tragic a story as that of the Donner Party, the Stephens-Townsend party’s story left behind little documentation. Dr. Townsend reputedly kept a journal of their exodus, but what became of that journal is unknown. That did not stop Celia Hayes from researching and re-imagining events. Hayes skillfully weaves the story by recreating a fictional journal for the doctor, creating a historical project memoir of one of the children, Eddie Patterson, who recalls in 1932 his time on the trail, and by creating letters to a friend from Dr. Townsend’s wife. These first person narratives are interspersed with the regular third-person narrative that is the majority of the text. The shifting points of view help maintain the reader’s interest even when the events the pioneers are experiencing are at times long periods of toil and boredom.

The novel does read slowly and several typos distract the reader. At first, I kept wondering when something exciting would happen like an attack by Indians or cannibalism in the mountains. However, I was engrossed in the book by the time I was a quarter of the way through it, and I read the last two hundred pages in one day. The author, wisely, does not seek to entertain the reader with sensationalism, but rather she gives detailed depictions of the daily life of the wagon train—the babies being born, the oxen nearly stampeding from thirst, having to douse fires from fear of Indian attack. The novel’s slow pacing makes one appreciate how long and tedious the journey west must have been. This incredibly long and dangerous undertaking comes home all the more at the end when Eddie Patterson recalls returning along the trail decades later when he is able to cross over mountains in minutes by railroad, crossings that would have taken days for the Stephens-Townsend party.

As I read “To Truckee’s Trail,” I felt the trepidation, the fear, and the exhaustion of the pioneers. At the same time, Hayes’s prose is almost poetic, making one see the courage and the humor in the face of odds that defined the pioneer spirit. I was content to experience the journey from my armchair, in sheer wonder at what it must have been like to make the trip in real life. I have traveled across the country in an automobile over the course of a week and that alone is an undertaking; I can’t imagine the faith and determination that drove on these pioneers. “To Truckee’s Trail” makes me appreciate the generations who came before me and all they went through to build this country—a task from which Americans, generations later, now profit. “To Truckee’s Trail” is one of those stories that should be read in our high schools, and colleges, to make American history comes alive to students. It is a story that stays in the reader’s head long after the last page is turned. It makes one feel grateful even for the smallest comforts we have today, and it encourages one to persevere to accomplish great deeds oneself.

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