by Sandra Dallas
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Product Description
During Word War II, a family fnds life turned upside down when the government opens a Japanese internment camp in their small Colorado town. After a young girl is murdered, all eyes (and suspicions) turn to the newcomers, the interlopers, the strangers. This is her town as Rennie Stroud has never seen it before. She has just turned thirteen and, until this time, life has pretty much been what her father told her it should be: predictable and fair. But now the winds of change are coming and, with them, a shift in her perspective. And Rennie will discover secrets that can destroy even the most sacred things. Part thriller, part historical novel, Tallgrass is a riveting exploration of the darkest---and best---parts of the human heart.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Wonderful summer read, 2008-07-28
This was a wonderful book. The writing style of the author was unfamiliar to me, as this was the first book of her's I have read. I really enjoyed the time period, World War II, and especially that it was written about what was going on back here in the U.S. I think there are a lot of books written about this war, but they are almost always about the battle, not how life went on while war was being waged. I am very interested in Japanese culture and this described quite a bit about the internment camps and the people who endured them. I also especially liked the main character, and her family.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Novel, 2008-06-07
Loved it. Based on history it gave an interesting perspective in contrast to Snow on Cedars which also is a great book.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Growing up during WW2, 2008-05-26
Rennie is a 13 year old girl growing up in the early 1940's in Colorado. A time of life and place that should be idyllic if not for the war that burst upon the nation. The main impact of the war is that a Japanese Internment camp is created not far from town and close to Rennie's farm where her father, mother, and older brother grow beets for sugar.
The war does impact everyone in another way also. The town's boys and young men are drafted or volunteer to serve and some of them are captured or die as a result of that. Once the camp is in place, and the Japanese move in, the townspeople split amongst those who are bigotted and hate-filled and those who are willing to tolerate and even support the Americans of Japanese descent that are in their midst. Unfortunately, things take a turn for the worse when one of Rennie's schoolmates is savagely murdered and raped even though she is crippled by Polio. This almost tears up the town as the bigotted side assumes that a Japanese did it, while the others are willing to let the Sheriff find out what happened.
The story's focus is on growing up and the challenges that being a dirt-poor sugar beet farm family have to overcome. There is a lot of trouble in the town of Ellis, Colorado and not all of it is due to the japanese. The only other close friend of Rennie's is forced to miss part of her school year to supposedly help out in her father's hardware store when he takes ill and cannot take care of things.
Idyllic, the town is not. Between morphine addicts, murderers, rapists, and wife beaters, the townsfolk are painted in a mostly negative light. Couple that with the bigotry against the Mexicans and the Japanese and you wonder how the U.S. became as accepting and liberal of a country as it is. To counter the negativism we see the struggles of the Strouds and the other few decent human beings in the town who present the best of American attitudes and values.
The various crimes committed in the book are ultimately resolved in a way that is supposed to be satisfying and the murderer of the young girl is found and captured - and, of course, is NOT of Japanese descent - but overall I was left with a bad taste in my mouth when finished this book as it was overall very dark and showed more of the negative side of life. There was very little character development and the main subjects in the book were more cartoons than real people.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Great Book, 2008-05-20
I really enjoyed this book. It brought up a lot of very heavy issues without getting to emotional. It was a page turner that had a very happy ending.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 Difficult to finish, 2008-05-18
I finished this book only because it is the pick for my next book club meeting. If not for that, I would have allowed myself to put it down after the first excruciating chapter. The novel is populated by caricatures instead of characters. There is the wise-beyond-her-years teenager; the sickly, hard-working mother; the overall-clad father who always says and does the right thing; and a host of other mostly bad boys and mostly good girls.
The dialogue often rings false, and the descriptions of scenes and people sometime seem trite. I found this to be true especially in passages involving women who were part of a quilting circle.
I gave the novel one star because the subject matter itself, a Japanese internment camp during World War II, is interesting.
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