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Review ------ “Tallgrass will undoubtedly draw apt comparisons with such novels as To Kill a Mockingbird and Snow Falling on Cedars. Sandra Dallas has penned a poignant novel that is not just about a young woman's coming of age, but also about the battle of reasonable people against unreasoned fear and prejudice. A powerful story whose strength is firmly rooted in its respect for language, its depth of character, and its marvelous evocation of place and time, Tallgrass has all the elements of an American classic.” ―William Kent Krueger, author of the prize-winning Corcoran O'Connor mystery series “Sandra Dallas is a true American Voice. She writes of small towns within a big landscape. And Tallgrass speaks to a time in our history when prejudice and fear fueled passions that divided family and friends. And yet, always, Dallas writes of the human spirit that soars above it all.” ―Gail Tsukiyama, author of Dreaming Water “Deftly capturing regional voice as well as period detail, Sandra Dallas weaves a vivid portrait of a Colorado farm town unsettled by change and divided by mistrust on the World War II home front. Tallgrass is a compelling and genuinely moving novel that will keep readers guessing until the last page.” ―Jennifer Chiaverini, author of Circle of Quilters “Tallgrass is a must-read for every American. . . . Sandra Dallas captures the feelings of people in eastern Colorado, a part of the great American plains. Residents thought they were isolated from the great global conflict, but the winds of change deposited one of the internment camps in their midst. What a setting for a novel!” ―former congresswoman Pat Schroeder, president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) “A profoundly moving story, told from the viewpoints of victims and witnesses, that hits the reader with ins into the human side of a barely remembered national tragedy of World War II.” ―Bill Hosokawa, author of Nisei “A rich and unforgettable story . . . With astonishing deftness, Sandra Dallas evokes a part of our history that we might wish to forget, and she does it in such a way that we understand why it is important to remember.” ―Margaret Coel, author of The Drowning Man “Even the barbed wire can't contain the characters in this novel. They escaped from the story to live in my mind long after I put down the book. With their hopes and dreams and dilemmas, they seem made of and blood.” ―Iain Lawrence, author of The Wreckers “A moving tale of maturation . . . Fear and prejudice threatens a small Colorado town in World War II, but goodness and mercy abound in a young heroine every bit as appealing as To Kill a Mockingbird's Scout.” ―Angela Hunt, author of Magdalene and The Elevator “Tallgrass is a coming-of-age novel in that classic tradition, and perhaps the author's most stellar achievement in this book is her creation of young Rennie Stroud, the novel's memorable young narrator, a frank and watchful girl burdened by her own kind heart.” ―Michael Raleigh, author of In the Castle of the Flynns Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) About the Author ---------------- Award-winning author Sandra Dallas was dubbed "a quintessential American voice" by Jane Smiley, in Vogue Magazine. She is the author of The Bride's House, Whiter Than Snow, and Prayers for Sale, among others. Her novels have been translated into a dozen languages and optioned for films. She is the recipient of the Women Writing the West Willa Award and the two-time winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award. For 25 years, Dallas worked as a reporter covering the Rocky ain region for Business Week, and started writing fiction in 1990. She lives with her husband in Denver, Colorado. Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) P.when('A').execute(function(A) { A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse', function(data) { window.scroll(0, data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100); }); }); Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. -------------------------------------------------------- The summer I was thirteen, the Japanese came to Ellis. Not Ellis, exactly, but to the old Tallgrass Ranch, which the government had turned into a relocation camp. Tallgrass was a mile and a half from Ellis, less than a mile past our farm, and it was one of the camps the government was building then to house the Japanese. In early 1942, the Japanese on the West Coast had been rounded up and incarcerated in places such as the Santa Anita race-track. Those destined for Colorado waited there until streets had been bladed into the yucca and sagebrush at Tallgrass, guard towers and barracks thrown up, and the camp fenced off with bob-wire. Then they were put on a train and sent a thousand miles to Ellis. Irem ember the crowd of townspeople at the depot the day the first Japanese arrived. The arrival date was supposed to be a secret, but we knew the evacuees were coming, because the government had alerted the stationmaster and hired bus drivers, and guards with s patrolled the station platform. I’d sneaked away from my parents and gone to the depot, too, because I’d never seen any Japanese. I expected them to look like the cartoons of Hirohito in the newspaper, with slanted eyes and buckteeth and skin like rancid butter. All these years later, Irecall Iwa s disappointed that they didn’t appear to be a “yellow peril” at all. They were so ordinary. That is what I remember most about them. The Japanese gripped the handrails as they got off the train because the steps were steep and their legs were short, and they frowned and blinked into the white-hot sun. They had made the trip with the shades in the coaches pulled down, and the glare of the prairie hurt their eyes. Most of the evacuees on that first train were men, dressed in suits, rumpled now after the long ride, ties that were loosened, and straw hats. Some had on felt hats, although it was August. The few women wore tailored skirts and blouses and summer dresses with shoulder pads, coats over their arms. They pulled ves from their pocketbooks and tied them around their heads to keep the hot wind from blowing dust into their hair. Some of the women had on wedgies or open-toed spectator pumps and silk or rayon stockings. Each evacuee carried a single suitcase, because that was all they had been allowed to bring with them. The adults stood quietly in little groups, whispering, waiting to be told what to do. I expected one of the guards to take charge, to steer the people to the school buses lined up along the platform or tell them to go inside where it was cooler. But no one did, so they waited, confused. I wanted to point the evacuees to the drinking fountain and the bathrooms in the depot. They must have needed them. But I didn’t dare speak up. Some of the men took out packages of Camels and Chesterfields and Lucky Strikes and lighted s. None of them chewed , and none of the women smoked. Several children, cooped up for days, seemed glad to be out in the open, and they squatted down to examine the tracks or ran around, jerky as Mexican jumping beans. A little boy smiled at me, but I turned away, embarrassed to make a connection with him. I wondered if the kids were supposed to be our enemies, too. Then the mothers called to them, and the children joined their parents, fidgeting as they looked at us shyly. Only the children took notice of the group of townspeople on the platform staring at them, many hostile, all of us curious. A man who stepped down from the last car removed his hat, an expensive one that did not have sweat stains like the hats the farmers wore. He smoothed his hair, which appeared to have been slicked back with Vitalis or some other hair oil, because every strand was in place, despite the wind. Holding the hat in his hand, he rubbed his wrist across his forehead. Shading his eyes, he squinted at the prairie grass that glinted like brass in the sun and asked the man beside him, “Where are we?” The second man shrugged, and I suddenly felt sorry for the Japanese. What if the government had taken over our farm and sent us far away on the train, and nobody would tell us our destination? But we weren’t Japanese. We were Americans. “Ellis. You’re at Ellis, Colorado,” awoman nearme called out. Her husband shushed her. “Don’t tell those people where they’re at. Don’t you know nothing?” He rubbed his big face with a hand that the sun had turned as brown as a walnut. The man had shaved before coming to town. You could tell by the tiny clots of dried blood where he had nicked himself and the clumps of whiskers the razor had missed. They stuck up in the folds of his skin like willow shoots in a gully. The Japanese man looked into the crowd, searching for the woman who’d spoken. She kept still, however, so he put his hat back on, tightened his tie, and buttoned his suit jacket as he leaned down to whisper something to a girl about my age. I admired her saddle shoes, thinking she must be rich, because saddle shoes cost more than the plain brown oxfords Mom bought me. I wondered how long her shoes would stay white in the dirt of Tallgrass. It wasn’t likely that she’d put shoe polish into her small suitcase. The girl shook back her hair, which was long and black and glossy. I had never seen such hair. It was as if coal had been spun into long threads. She unfolded a f splashed with pink flowers and put it around her head, tying it at the back of her neck, under her hair. “Silk. Real silk,” a woman near me muttered, but I could not tell if she was jealous or just stating a fact. A man beside her observed, “I thought they’d have buckteeth. They don’t have buckteeth.” “ You got buckteeth enough for all of ’em,” called one of the boys at the back of the crowd. The man turned around and searched the faces, but he couldn’t identify the kid who’d spoken. I could. He was Beaner Jack. I knew because Danny Spano stopped chugging his Grapette long enough to slap Beaner on the back and say, “Good one.” Beaner and Danny were always together, except for the time when Danny was in the army. He’d been in an accident at Camp Carson, near Colorado Springs, and hurt his foot, and the army didn’t want him anymore, so he’d been mustered out. Now he was back in Ellis. Both Danny and Beaner were eighteen, the age of my sister, Marthalice, who had gone to Denver to work in an arms after she graduated in May. I didn’t know whether she’d done it because she was patriotic or because she was blue after her favorite boyfriend, Hank Gantz, quit school to join the navy. My brother, Buddy, who was twenty-one, had left college to enlist in the army the week after Pearl Harbor. Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) See more ( javascript:void(0) )