Customer Reviews

Tallgrass

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After the surprise attack of Pearl Harbor during WWII, President Roosevelt signed an act that forced Japanese American's to be relocated to interment camps. One such camp, built on beet field land in Colorado, brought much change to the small town of Ellis. Rennie, 13, and her family of 5 own the beet farm close to the camp and through this innocent, yet wise little girl we learn the perils of such a blatant act of prejudice.

Rennie and her family find the Japanese American's to be good people, thus hiring them for farming and help within their home to the chagrin and chastising of many residents of Ellis. Much upheaval brews, including the rape and sodomy of a Susan Riddick, a young friend of Rennie's. Enraged that something this heinous hadn't happened in their little town before the "Japs" came, many Ellis residents blame the Japanese American internees. There in lies a mystery entwined into a book about people unnerved by change and riled by ignorance.

Sandra Dallas's characters are always "everyday" folk. Their wisdom comes from the college of hard knocks and how they learn is determined by their ability to process life as a burden or a gift. Adding a mystery to her plots keeps the reader engrossed, unsettled, angered and ultimately richer in knowledge. That is what a great book is suppose to do and Sandra Dallas delivers with a one-two punch.

I highly recommend this lovely book

This story, told through the eyes of a 13 year old girl caught my full attention from the first paragraph and never disappointed me throughout the entire story. When I picked up the book to read a new chapter I was immediately transported back to WW II Colorado (and America) and felt the characters were people I knew. This was a book that I did not want to end but, alas, it had to. I have read most of Ms. Dallas' other works and consider her a favorite author of mine because she develops her characters with such depth that one really feels they know them. Keep up the good work and I would not be at all surprised if this book was made into a movie.

this book was totally engrossing, very evocative of the time period and the attiutudes of some of the characters in the early world war 2 setting. it's told through the eyes of a young girl coming to terms with both the goodness and the ugliness in the world. i couldn't put it down.

TALLGRASS is set during World War II and a major focus is the plight of the Japanese "relocated" to internment camps after Pearl Harbor. The novel is told through the eyes of Rennie, a thirteen year old farm girl, who lives near one of these camps in the community of Ellis, Colorado. Ellis is a fictionalized version of the real town of Granada which was the site of the only internment camp in Colorado. Granada like the fictional Ellis is in the southeast part of the state, a sparsely populated farming area that has more in common with the neighboring Oklahoma Panhandle than suburban Denver or the upscale mountain towns of Colorado.

One of Rennie's school friends, who had been crippled by polio, is found brutally murdered. The area people quickly assume one or more of the Japanese must have committed the crime and this murder mystery and the local folk's reaction to it form the central plot of the book. Several interesting subplots also keep reader's engaged until all are neatly tied up at the novel's end.

Sandra Dallas does a good job of bringing Rennie, her family, friends and the other often bigoted rural residents to life. She portrays small town attitudes during World War II as well as farm/ranch life in that era accurately. The weakest point of the book is that the Japanese people, several of whom are hired to work at Rennie's family's sugar beet farm, are not as well developed as the other characters. The book is of similar length and style to the several other novels Sandra Dallas has published and as in many of her novels quilting and women's sewing circles play an important part.

This heartwarming coming of age tale has many elements that combine into a wonderful story - history, prejudice, human decency, mystery, and quirky characters. Having read When the Emperor Was Divine, which was told from the Japanese point of view, I was interested to read again about the WWII internment camps from a different perspective. The characters in this novel were absolutely wonderful, especially Rennie, her mom and her dad. Even the characters I did not like were interesting and the book provided a lot to think about. This would be a terrific book club book.

First let me say I like Sandra Dallas's works and have read most of them. Persian Pickle Club, The Chili Queen and Alice's Tulips have their reserved spots on my library shelf. I expected more from this novel, as she usually develops her characters so well, especially with this subject matter, she could have given us so much more. I love historical fiction and a bit more depth in the details would have added a lot to the reading experience.

It wasn't bad, I don't think she can write bad, but I kept expecting something to grab me and not let go, but it didn't happen for me. I didn't find myself thinking of the characters after it was finished either as sometimes one can be. There is good discussion material for a club however, and a few of the characters were interesting enough to talk about.

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.

Set in Colorado during World War II when the government was setting up interment camps for American Japanese, fearing they would sabotage the war efforts. Tallgrass is the story of Rennie Stroud, who is 13 when a camp is set up near her farm. Several young men from the camp are hired by her father to work on their beet farm and they also hire a girl as household help, so Rennie gets to know them and finds them no different from other people. But there is a great deal of prejudice in the community against the Japanese, and when a young girl is murdered, the Japanese are blamed.
This is a story for upper middle grade to adult and should be in all school libraries. Eunice Boeve author of Maggie Rose and Sass

Some reviewers compare this to "To Kill a Mockingbird," and with good reason. There are several elements that are taken from TKMB, for instance, the father standing tall against bigotry and the schoolyard fighting over that. I'm rather surprised that there hasn't been some talk about what has been lifted clearly from TKMB.

Why this book is Young Adult has to do with the language used by narrator in telling the reader about the events of that time. The vocabulary and sentence constructions are about eighth-grade level. "To Kill a Mockingbird," by contrast, is told via adult vocabulary and perspective by its narrator, the grown woman Scout. This is particularly effective because such language allows for multiple meanings -- a wry look at childhood's perspectives, a mythological sense of what happened that summer, and the perspective that the passing of time has given the adult narrator (among other haunting effects). In fact, the key element of TKMB's power is the narrator's language. Such tools are not available to the writer of "Tallgrass" because of her committment to a childish vocabulary and parallel emotional perspective of the main character. Much has thus been lost in what could have been a powerful retelling of a year's pivotal events. "Tallgrass" remains a Young Adult story, engaging and sometimes compelling, with heartfelt characterizations, but is ultimately disappointing to the adult reader.

The premise for this story was great but I was expecting so much more and the further I read, the more aggravated I got with this book. I didn't feel the sympathy for the Japanese at the Tallgrass camp because the author failed to develop those characters, along with the rest of the major players in this book. I wish the author had spent more time on the development of the characters and less time on making apple pies, cooking and quilting.

I realize that the story was being told thru the eyes of a thirteen year old girl, but she wore on my nerves after a while and the author portrayed her parents as almost corney.