![]() Rennie’s dad is a beet farmer whose matter-of-fact outlook on life anchors the family. ![]() Her mother is the emotional compass for Rennie’s family, which includes a brother who has enlisted, an older sister who lives in Denver and works at a war-related job, and an aging grandmother who moves in and out of lucidity. We immediately like young Rennie Stroud (affectionately called “Squirt” by her father) and her believable family. Dallas has written an intelligent and moving tale. The fictional camp of Tallgrass, is based on the real camp of Amache, built just outside Granada, Colorado in 1942. What they find are people dressed like them (and many dressed much better), as rumpled and worn out as any train travelers anywhere and not a bucktooth cartoon among them. They have come to see the bucktooth people of anti-Japanese cartoons and war posters. What they know about the Japanese is what they read in the paper. Ellis is a community made up of farmers, ranchers, shop owners and the like, not the sophisticated citizens of Denver. She is among the townsfolk who have gathered at the station to gawk at the detainees as they disembark the train. ![]() This is thirteen year-old Rennie Stroud’s telling. ![]() The first glimpse we have of the Japanese Americans is their arrival at the train depot in fictional Ellis, Colorado. Is there anything to be gained by reading another book about the World War II internment of Japanese Americans to relocation camps? If the book is as good as Sandra Dallas’ Tallgrass, the answer is a resounding yes. ![]()
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