Summary of Daniel James Brown's The Indifferent Stars Above

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 In 1846, Sarah Barrows was about to leave her home in Illinois for California. She was in love with a young man who played the violin, and she was about to get married to him. But her mother and father and siblings were about to leave for California, and she would never see them again.

#2 When Sarah broke off the engagement and chose to follow her family, she had to leave behind this place she had lived since she was six, the only place she could remember as home.

#3 Sarah’s family lived on the western side of the Oregon River, near Lacon. They were well known and widely regarded with affection by the villagers in Lacon. Sarah had to leave all of this behind if she wanted to move to California.

#4 The Graves family, who moved to Illinois, was extremely hardworking and generous. They were also extremely cold-blooded, as they would help their neighbors with the coldest winter of 1839–40.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Mar 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669358602

IRB Media

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Insights on Daniel James Brown's The Indifferent Stars Above

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In 1846, Sarah Barrows was about to leave her home in Illinois for California. She was in love with a young man who played the violin, and she was about to get married to him. But her mother and father and siblings were about to leave for California, and she would never see them again.

#2

When Sarah broke off the engagement and chose to follow her family, she had to leave behind this place she had lived since she was six, the only place she could remember as home.

#3

Sarah’s family lived on the western side of the Oregon River, near Lacon. They were well known and widely regarded with affection by the villagers in Lacon. Sarah had to leave all of this behind if she wanted to move to California.

#4

The Graves family, who moved to Illinois, was extremely hardworking and generous. They were also extremely cold-blooded, as they would help their neighbors with the coldest winter of 1839–40.

#5

The first white settlers in Illinois were ravaged by the ague, or the Illinois shakes, a disease that lasted from spring to fall. It was relentless, and between shivering with the cold in the winter and shaking with the ague in the spring and summer, it wore down a man.

#6

The settlers in Illinois, like their forefathers in New England and England, did not know what was causing the outbreaks. They had inherited from those forefathers a general belief that damp weather and stagnant air were a principal cause of the fevers. But they never thought of the mosquitoes as anything more than highly irritating nuisances.

#7

As the settlers waited for the crops to mature, the markets for their goods dried up and they were forced to resort to a barter economy. They began dreaming of a better place, and they were about to find it.

#8

The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California was a book published in Cincinnati in 1845 that promised settlers that the territories were rich and ripe for the taking. It sold well, and many settlers traveled to Oregon and California based on its claims.

#9

In 1846, Franklin Graves signed away his land to George Sparr for three dollars an acre, fifteen hundred dollars in cash. He then took an auger