White Hell tells the story of Peter 'Peanuts' McEwan, a white man pioneering west to California in 1846, who befriends an escaped slave named Violet and fights to protect her from the bigotry of his fellow travelers, and ultimately, from being sacrificed and cannibalized when their journey is halted by the mother of all snowstorms.

White Hell is loosely based on the infamous Donner Party Disaster, but author Sean Tyler draws on several genres-the novel is, at once, a romance, a western, a racial injustice drama, and, finally, a horrific freefall into cannibalism that seamlessly flows into one hell of an epic tale.