The Hunger Hardcover – March 6, 2018

The Donner Party tragedy — a horribly-gone-wrong 1846 emigration to California that ended with half the emigrants dead and the survivors having to resort to cannibalism — would hardly seem to need a ratcheting up of the horror via the addition of the supernatural. But that’s just what Alma Katsu has done in her Locus-nominated novel The Hunger. And honestly, I’m still not sure I needed the supernatural aspect because Katsu has created an entirely compelling, immersively suspenseful account of this harrowing journey just out of the more mundane character and environment.
The book opens with a prologue, which is really a looking ahead in time, as a rescue group sent out in April of 1847 to find the “last known survivor of the Donnor Party tragedy” arrives to find the site “eerily quiet . . . no sounds at all, no birdsong, no splash of waterfowl” and “the entire site smell [ing] of carrion. The rich stench of decaying flesh.” Approaching the lone cabin, they note “what looked like a human vertebra, cleaned of skin,” leaving only a brave few to step up before the door, which then “opened on its own,” ending the chapter.From that cliff-hanger we jump back to Nebraska, June 1846 as Charles Stanton is shaving before the wagon train sets out for the day. But even this routine domestic act is laden with a sense of the ominous as Stanton first recalls a line of his grandfather’s — “A wicked man hides behind a beard, like Lucifer,” — and then cuts himself so that his razor “was streaked with blood” and on his neck appeared a “line of crimson . . . a gaping three-inch slash.” A minor cut, but emblematic he thinks of the entire “damnable journey in a nutshell. One unexpected ‘mishap’ after another.”Stanton’s POV is one of several Katsu employs, the others including Edwin Bryant, a former newspaperman looking to learn about Native American folklore; Tamsen Donner, the beautiful wife of the wagon leader who is rumored to be both a temptress and a witch; Elitha Donner; Tamsen’s step-daughter; Mary Graves, a thoughtful, innocent young woman who becomes close to Stanton; and James Reed, George Donner’s rival to head the party. Nearly all of them have a secret of some sort (Elitha, for instance, has begun to hear voices in her head), each of which will eventually be revealed.As Stanton cleans up from his shaving accident, Bryant tell him he and a few others are going to ride ahead, no longer willing to move at the train’s dangerously slow pace, especially this late in the season, and asks if Stanton wants to join them. Before he can answer though, news comes of a young boy gone missing, and soon after that the child’s body is found (“or what was left of him”), badly mutilated in a fashion Bryant (who has some medical training) says is too neat and orderly to have been done by wolves, not, he says, does it look like the work of Native Americans.Things actually go downhill from that point on. Internal divisions, rivalries, and jealousies begin to divide the members of the party. Tempers explode raising the threat of violence and then violence itself. Food begins to run out. The weather worsens. Bad route decisions are made. Their promised guide never materializes. Accusations of all sorts start to fly. Respite stops, such as Fort Bridger, aren’t the havens that had been hoped for. And underlying all of that is the sense that something is stalking the party even as it becomes more and more isolated from the world and grows weaker and weaker. Though as is often the case in this sort of literary horror, the question becomes which is more deadly — the monsters outside or the monsters inside? Or are they possibly one and the same?Katsu doles out omens and blows steadily and in increasingly intense form, ratcheting up the tension bit by bit: Elitha’s voice, an affair that may threaten the uneasy balance in the party, a shocking revelation inside an abandoned shack, bodies that appear to have been meant as sacrifices, a murder, an expulsion, a charge of witchcraft, an attempted rape, and eventually a drawn-out siege. Weaving in and out amongst all this is a restrained thread of the fantastical: Tamsen’s charms and herbal concoctions, Elitha’s voices, and the Indians legend of the “na-it” (the hunger) — a transformation that comes upon the stricken, “a bad spirit that can pass from man to man.” That last, which of course gives the book its title, is a wonderfully evocative concept, because while it comes from a Native American legend, Katsu makes it quite clear who that term really refers to. After all, one needn’t conjure up some sort of magical monster to find a creature that has an insatiable hunger to consume everything, wipes out all life in an area, destroys the ecosystem, feeds on its own, and is an implacably merciless, unthinking predator. That underlying symbolism throughout the novel adds a nice bit of depth to the scary story at the surface.The unrelentingly claustrophobic tension of the wagon train’s journey is broken up by a series of letters from Bryant detailing his journey to track down a Native American legend akin to the Navajo skinwalker, as well as a series of flashbacks for the POV characters that explore their dark secrets and deepen their characters.That characterization is sharp throughout, and it’s a testament to Katsu’s skill in both narrative plotting and characterization that we are suspended in fear and suspense even as, of course, we know what happens to these people. Despite that knowledge, one finds oneself desperately wishing for some way these people (some of them at least), can avoid their fate. As if, after hewing relatively tightly to the facts of the Donnor Party’s journey (and Katsu does an excellent job with the historical details of that odyssey—whether it be the settings, the methods, the landmarks, or other such elements), the author will simply drop the whole historical accuracy aspect and spin us off into some sort of happy or semi-happy ending. But of course, that doesn’t happen.In fact, Katsu’s vivid recreation of the journey, her sharp characterization, her insightful plumbing of the depths of human nature (as well as, occasionally, showing us its heights), and her masterful control of tension meant that, for me at least, the supernatural elements were the least interesting aspects of the novel. I’m also, I confess, not a regular reader of horror fiction. Those coming to the book looking for a lot of the occult might find this a slow opening (I can see some fans complaining she spends “sooooo much time on the history . . . “). I, however, thought the book was mostly perfectly paced.That only changed somewhat toward the end, when things sped up a bit and, perhaps not uncoincidentally, the monsters made their first really direct appearances and attacks. But then, things slowed again, and those events led to two great scenes at the end. While the last bit of the novel, therefore, is a bit disappointing, it’s only in comparison to what has come before, is relatively brief, and gets us in short order back to several strong moments. This was, so far, my favorite of the Locus-nominated novels I’ve read this past month.(review originally appeared at fantasyliterature.com)

Most people recognize the name of the Donner party and know some of its horrendous, ill fortune trying to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains to get to California in an expedition during 1846-1847 via covered wagon, horseback, and on foot. Alma Katsu vividly recreates that nightmare trip in her latest novel, The Hunger (2018; 376 pp.) She reveals in the novel’s “Acknowledgements” she takes “many liberties in shaping the material for fiction” and “names, locations, and dates have remained but much else has been changed to fit the story,” but the suffering and misery of those in the party reads very true to life. More importantly, Katsu introduces a chilling and monstrous supernatural element into this very famous, historical tragedy.It is a large group of ninety headed west “consisting mostly of the Donner and Reed families” joining up “with a much larger group led by a retired military man, William Russell, outside Independence, Missouri.” Their party is on the move later in the season than most forcing them to move with deliberation and there are problems: a barrel of flour is found “infested with weevils.” A young woman delivers a stillborn. The party is being followed by wolves. But it isn’t until they are in “mile after uninterrupted mile of buffalo grass, disrupted only by the red spire of Chimney Rock [in what later would be western Nebraska], standing like a sentry in the distance” that real trouble strikes. Yet to reach Fort Laramie [in modern day Wyoming] with the fort’s walls “at the very edge of civilization,” six-year-old William Nystrom goes missing from his tent during the night. His disappearance “spooks” the party—some of whom are already afraid of Indians; some of whom have heard stories of “spirits…[in] the forests and the hills and the rivers.” Some also know about the letters left in a cabin in Ash Hollow by other travelers one of which warns: “Turn back… Turn back or you all will die.” When the Nystrom boy is found, his body is in torn tatters.Thus, begins an expedition into terror. With eloquent, suspenseful prose and real-to-life characters and dialogue coupled with the feel of historical and geographic intensity and realism Katsu gives her audience an unforgettable reading experience in The Hunger.Katsu delivers strong character development in The Hunger and many of the characters come from varied backgrounds with a variety of reasons for desiring a new life in California. Through flashbacks and letters, Katsu both reveals many of the characters’ back histories while she diversifies the book’s narrative voice. Their reasons for attempting the arduous trip often comes from unfortunate decisions and actions in their lives they hope to shed. Some, however, cannot so quickly change their ways or lack the motivation to do so and bring the evil of their past lives with them on the trek west.The pasts of many of the characters often get disclosed within the group due to gossip, pettiness, or a desire to put a person in their place. Considering the tensions already among the group trying to survive an inhospitable environment as well as something pernicious and malevolent following them, the revelations lead to mistrust, anger, resentment, discord, and division among a group of people whose best hope is to stay united. [It is while describing one violent brawl the author may make a misstep. One of the men hurls a repeated expletive at the other. Modern readers will certainly know the word, but it is a bit jarring to come across it in a novel set during 1846-7. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the word to 1905 as a derogative term for a male and cites the first use of the word in print occurring in 1913 with its modern-day meaning. Thus, it isn’t too likely the word was being commonly used nearly sixty years earlier.]Despite an old-fashioned, almost gushy romance near the novel’s half-way point, The Hunger is a dark work befitting a tale of the Donner party with the “starvation [and] hard snows” they face which only gets bleaker with every mile the group moves forward. Fear, speculation, and paranoia grows regarding what is following the party. With no lessening of the tension and suspense to be found in the novel, readers will grasp what follows the assemblage well before the group comes to the same realization. Since members of the party become separated both physically and emotionally from each other at times, different portions of the party are made aware of the fact and fall victim to the hideous truth at different times than others. This can occasionally lead to some repetition in the novel. There are some truly frightful, gruesome scenes which accompany and lay bare the fates of a growing number of the group, but Katsu usually keeps most of the details of the creatures in the shadows as in old-fashioned horror films where the greatest impact is not to show the audience the monster until the climax of the movie, allowing the viewer to use their imagination. There is also a gnawing realization that some of the atrociousness which befalls the party is not all due to unnatural causes. Heroism and self-sacrifice shine an occasional light on events in The Hunger, but ironically, human malevolence often comes close to matching any of the terrifying preternatural wickedness that befalls the Donner party.The dread which oozes within The Hunger may fit the definition of “literary” horror and might be seen by some readers as a gradual, slow-burn but Katsu provides enough conflict and alarming scenes along the way to keep the most impatient reader adamantly clinging to each page, their imagination and curiosity fully engaged. With its unique foundation in true events and the author’s imaginative additions and excellent storytelling, The Hunger is likely to satisfy the neediest appetite.

I just finished reading this book for the second time. It was even better than the FIRST time! This is Mary Shelly-level imagination. Do yourself a big favor...get off the dime, grab a sliver of jerky, and buy this book.Also, as we live near Truckee & Verdi we give this book an extra hearty, 4-Femurs Up!!

If you’re a fan of historical fiction, with a vague touch of the supernatural then Alma Katsu’s “The Hunger” may well be the book for you. I thoroughly enjoyed it and although it’s a novel which may not be lumped with ‘horror’ in the bookshops it has got more than enough to keep fans of the genre entertained, particularly in its gruelling second half.Based on a true story, the disappearance of a large wagon train heading west towards California in the mid-1840s, Alma Katsu has made a superb job of recreating the hard and dangerous life of the wagon train. For much of the perilous journey there is a vague suspicion of something nasty tracking the ninety or so travellers, including many children, wives and old folks. Many of the group were desperate men, heading west with a lack of provisions, ill-prepared and hoping to survive the perilous 2000 mile journey to enjoy what later became known as the ‘American Dream’. But instead we’re heading into nightmare territory.It’s hard to know what to compare this superb beast of a novel to, however, if Dan Simmons decided to tackle the American frontier period he may well come up with something like “The Hunger” and that’s high praise indeed. The novel is full of colourful period detail, exquisitely researched, and although it moves along at a slow pace it is never dull and I read it very quickly. However, if you do prefer a slash, bang, wallop kind of horror then this is probably not the book for you. It inhabits the literary end of the genre and is a fine example of how to build tension, slow dread and fear as the travellers are picked off one by one after the first young boy is disappears early in their journey, his eaten corpse found strangely ahead of the wagon train a few days later. Indians or wolves are suspected, but soon the fear and suspicion spreads.According to the informative author end-notes the true events of the disappearance of the ‘Donner Party’, or at least the facts that do exist, was common knowledge until the last couple of generations and have now disappeared from common American historical knowledge. As George Donner had the most wagons and financial clout he declared himself leader of the convoy, but with winter fast approaching the wagon train falls behind schedule and they are left with a critical choice to make. Either go the familiar safer wagon route, or follow a supposed short-cut which is unexplored, but rumoured to shave 300 miles from the journey. They foolishly take the short cut.Although the whole book is a journey, with something nasty lurking in the background, the book is as much about the people as anything else. It is also easy enough to argue the plot would have been strong enough without any supernatural elements at all. Seen from multiple points of view there are some wonderfully drawn characters and the novel uses both flashbacks and letters to explore many key back stories. For many of them, risking a 2000-mile journey, means they are running away from something. Amongst these good Christian men and women, we have every kind of secret from infidelity, homosexual lust, murder, to incest, all of which slowly unravel as the wagon train begins to flounder. Laced into the plot are many clever cultural observations from the period, for example, why were unmarried men treated with suspicion? As one of the leading characters Stanton finds out.“The Hunger” was a superbly thoughtful novel, which ultimately stretched the limits of human endurance, as there is more than one kind of ‘hunger’ within the pages of the book. Its strength lies in its depiction of the pioneer spirit of the brave ninety souls searching for a dream, not knowing a nightmare was waiting. Turning a factual event into a very readable novel is tricky, adding a convincing supernatural angle is even more difficult, but the author pulls it off admirably. It’s possible readers of ‘straight’ historical fiction may not like the direction the novel heads in the final 25% of its gruelling 400 pages. But, hey, that’s their loss.

The best thing to do when deciding whether to buy a book is to look at the one and two star reviews rather than the four or fives - I already knew this this but again made the mistake of falling for the hype. This book fails in almost every way it could - “characters“ who all speak with the same voice, a ridiculous supernatural element to a true story which was horrific and unbelievable enough without the sub- Stephen King nonsense that’s thrown in. Back stories anything but skilfully woven into the story, and not even a decent editor to check out some glaring historical errors. Oh and to top everything the writer seems like your typical “doesn’t live in the real world” snowflake - the fact that she has associations with Huffington Post should have warned me of that before I bought it.Don’t waste your money buy a non-fiction account of the truly harrowing saga instead.

I didn't realise until I read the author's notes at the back that this is based on a true story; I wish I had known.The atmosphere in this book is a such a winner, and the naïveté of the families who set out to travel through uncharted territory, from Illinois to California, is quite pitiful; they fancied they were setting out a great adventure, little understanding the size of America, the range of temperatures and terrains, the dangers they might face when trying to transport their families and entire homes through completely wild lands.Main characters feature: Stanton, a lone traveller with a troubled past; Bryant, a man fascinated with the Native American culture; Tamsen, a dissatisfied trophy wife; Reed, a pompous former shop owner; Elitha, a young woman who hears voices, the sinister Keseberg, whose back story is flesh-crawlingly gruesome... and there are points of view from various others, too. In fact, there are so many characters that I sometimes forgot who was who, but the main ones were well-drawn enough for them to stand out, and I realised after a while that it wasn't absolutely essential to remember everything about a character, just because he or she had a name.The party have started out too late in the season, and face many problems on the way, as, against advice, they take a route that is supposed to shave many miles off the journey, which becomes increasingly arduous ... and, waiting in the wings, is another danger.I did enjoy this book, a lot, though I thought it could have done without the supernatural aspect, which didn't really work for me, and seemed superfluous, turning the book into a genre it needn't have been; the darkness of man himself was enough to add all the terror the story required. However, this side of it is not too over-played, and I enjoyed it enough to buy a book suggested in the notes at the back - a fiction of the actual story, which Katsu used in her research.

This is a bad example of historical fiction. It is based on a wagon train trying to get to California. As you would expect, the wagon train contains many people.Sadly the author has treated them as a list of names. There is no attempt (or there is no successful attempt) to provide these people with characters. As a result the book was, for me, unreadable. When Jane Doe went to talk to Joe Smith I had no idea who these people were, what they had already done, what previous interactions had been described.I only read to the end to find out what had caused the hunger, the central mystery in the book. The author then fluffed this and didn't really resolve it.Also there was padding in the form of unnecessary back stories, or they may have been useful if only the people concerned had had characters.

If you want to read a poor retelling of the Donner party story , with the added attraction of a bunch of zombies running alongside not doing very much, this is the book for you.It's not so much an open ended ending, it's an open ended whole. Why are the monsters even there? These people are dying anyway. What's the point of a whole separate story line about some bloke (whose fate we never learn) discovering stuff about them, when they don't really have any part to play on the main storyline?Just a bit of a waste of time to be honest. Writing workmanlike, not particularly good but doesn't distract.