TALLGRASS

A Colorado beet farmer and his family are sorely tried by events of WWII.

When the U.S. government establishes a Japanese-American relocation camp in Ellis, Colo., in 1942, Loyal Stroud takes a view apart from most other townsfolk. Having “the enemy in their midst” riles the locals, but Loyal believes the whole thing is plain wrong. Why not round up all the German-Americans, too, while they’re at it? Aside from civic issues, Loyal has to figure out how to harvest his beets, what with Buddy, his son, enlisted, along with his farm hands. Against prevailing sentiment, Loyal hires three young men from the camp. And although Rennie, 14, the last child home, worries about her father’s decision, she and her mother, Mary, come to love the boys, who are from California farm country. And when Mary’s heart ailment finally gets bad enough for her to take the rest cure the doctor advised, the Strouds hire Daisy, the sister of one of the boys. Daisy works hard and speaks in a Hollywood tabloid lingo that charms the whole family. Their domestic harmony is rocked by news that Buddy is missing in action and—shockingly—that Rennie’s school friend Sally is found raped and murdered. Everyone except the Strouds and the sheriff believes “the Japs” did it, and the tension in town builds to the point of near-anarchy, when the local bigots get liquored up and try to take the law into their own hands. Throughout all this drama, as in most of Dallas’s work (Alice’s Tulips, 2000, etc.), a community of quilters, known here as the Jolly Stitchers, come and go, bringing cakes, covered casseroles and gossip to the sick and grieving. The parallels of a country at war then and now give this story a layer of poignancy, but otherwise, as is obvious from the start, the good guys win and the bad guys lose, and Buddy comes marching home.

A well-spun but familiar tale.