Delmarva Today: 7-3-20
My guest is Ashley Sweeney. We’ll talk about her new book Answer Creek, the story of The Donner Party. The great Missouri-based trails: the Oregon, Mormon, and California, used in the westward expansion between 1829 and 1870 witnessed approximately 500,000 emigrants making the journey to the west beyond the Great Plains. Most of these pioneers have been forgotten today except for perhaps one group, The Donner Party. The 87 members of this wagon train would probably have been forgotten as well except for their ordeal near Truckee Lake and Alder Creek in the Sierra Nevada Mountains… and the stories of cannibalism.
Even though Answer Creek is a work of historical fiction, Ada Weeks along with J. R. Riddle are the only fictional characters who play a significant role. All the other characters were actual members of what has come to be called The Donner Party. Other than these two characters, Ashley has remained true to the actual record of the tragedy in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Her research is extensive and adds new insight and material to the historical record while at the same time her descriptive and narrative capabilities adds human emotion and a sense of immediacy to the plight of these people pushed to the limit of human endurance.
Ashley Sweeney is the winner of the 2017 Nancy Pearl Book Award for her first novel, Eliza Waite. Answer Creek is her second novel. Ashley currently lives in the Pacific Northwest and Tucson but I want to add that her father is Jerry Sweeney, a familiar writer here on the Eastern Shore. He is one of the editors of the Delmarva Review, as well as a past president of The Eastern Shore Writers Association.