The structure of a novel can be the hardest thing to figure out.

I wanted to get to the "meat" of the story as quickly as possible.

Problem is, most of what made the Donner Party the Donner Party was the Hasting Cutoff, which was a "shortcut" through Utah and Nevada, going over the Wasatch Mountains and then down into the Great Salt Lake.

It was a disaster.  They fell far behind, lost much of their cattle and supplies.  By the time they reached the Sierra Nevada's they were already in trouble.

So I do want to detail some of the ordeal they went through.  It's also my chance to develop some of the characters before the desperation sets in.

So, I'm thinking I'll need to spend about the first third of the book developing this.

The solution, to some extent, is to have some action backed flashforward chapters, which I do in the first chapter.

This becomes a problem because the flashforward viewpoint character of that first chapter is out of danger after that some time.

I have another flashforward character I can use, but I'm afraid it might be confusing.

The structure of a novel can be about the hardest thing to figure out.