"But what will you do about rattlesnakes?" In 1978 a 37-year old woman, naive and inexperienced, leaves husband and children behind to trace the 2,000-mile pioneer Donner Trail. She walks...Alone. From her original raw journal we feel her ordeal of incapacitating foot pain, bewilderment, and fears of a woman alone in cities, back roads, deserts, wilderness... And then, as surely as the stars come out above her at night, the American people emerge one by one in a proud pageant of characters. From a dirt poor, aging Nebraska couple: "Here now, you just come on in. It's all right to cry. Set right down here in our special rocker. Would the davenport be better? How about a root beer float? I'm going to make you one. I'll bet you'd like a nice foot soak. I'll make a foot soak for you." More sobs. She meets hobos, wetbacks, madams, and cowboys, vibrant all. America shines turbulent and roiling, yet ultimately benevolent. Even the crazy Nevada woman who padlocks her in a shack and the police who strip search her in mistaken identity--all are deftly and humanely introduced. Buoyed by the tender kindness of strangers, she painstakingly grows into her expanding world of hog judging, cattle branding, and arrowhead hunting. She comes to revel in being alone, sleeping miles from the nearest human. Trekking deeper through the grand western landscape, we too thrill with her on seeing the languid grace of a mountain lion, marvel at the desert mirages, and come to regret the killing of furious rattlesnakes. But what of the Donner Party who inspired her journey? Their ghostly 1846 footsteps, faint at first, echo louder as she approaches California. After following their path and schedule for six searing months, she joins them in memorial before the great wall of the Sierra which had become their death trap. After a brief pause she triumphantly completes the journey to Sacramento's Sutter's Fort in honor of the many who never reached it but so gruesomely died trying.