Tallgrass (Dallas)

Tallgrass

This is Tallgrass 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. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—June 11, 1939
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., University of Denver
• Awards—numerous, see below
• Currently—lives in Denver, Colorado, USA

Award-winning author Sandra Dallas was dubbed “a quintessential American voice” by Jane Smiley, in Vogue magazine.  Sandra’s novels with their themes of loyalty, friendship, and human dignity have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and have been optioned for films.

A journalism graduate of the University of Denver, Sandra began her writing career as a reporter with Business Week. A staff member for twenty-five years (and the magazine’s first female bureau chief,) she covered the Rocky Mountain region, writing about everything from penny-stock scandals to hard-rock mining, western energy development to contemporary polygamy. Many of her experiences have been incorporated into her novels.

While a reporter, she began writing the first of ten nonfiction books. They include Sacred Paint, which won the National Cowboy Hall of Fame Western Heritage Wrangler Award, and The Quilt That Walked to Golden, recipient of the Independent Publishers Assn. Benjamin Franklin Award.

Turning to fiction in 1990, Sandra has published eight novels. She is the recipient of the Women Writing the West Willa Award for New Mercies, and two-time winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award, for The Chili Queen and Tallgrass. In addition, she was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award, the Mountain and Plains Booksellers Assn. Award, and a four-time finalist for the Women Writing the West Willa Award.

The mother of two daughters—Dana is an attorney in New Orleans and Povy is a photographer in Golden, Colorado— Sandra lives in Denver with her husband, Bob.

Her Own Words: 
• Because of my interest in the West—I wrote nine nonfiction books about the West before I turned to fiction—I’m a sucker for women’s journals of the westward movement. I wanted The Diary of Mattie Spenser to have the elements of a novel but to read as much like a 19th century journal as possible. Mattie is a woman of her time, not a current-day heroine dressed in a long skirt, and the language is faithful to the Civil War era.

• I added dialogue to keep the diary entries from being too stilted for contemporary readers. Making the diary believable has had an unforeseen consequence: Many readers believe it is an actual journal. They’ve asked where the diary is kept and what happened to the characters after the journal ended. One reader accused me of rewriting some of Mattie’s entries because she recognized my style. Another sent me a copy of an early Denver photograph, asking if the man in the picture was one of the characters in the book. (Author bio from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
An ugly murder is central to this compelling historical, but the focus is on one appealing family, the Strouds, in the backwater town of Ellis, Colo. Soon after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government rounded up all the Japanese residents of the West Coast and shipped them off to "internment camps" for the duration of the war. One of the camps is Tallgrass, based on an actual Colorado camp, as Dallas (The Chili Queen) explains in her acknowledgments. The major discomforts and petty indignities these (mostly) American citizens had to endure are viewed through the clear eyes of a young girl who lives on a nearby farm, Rennie Stroud. Rennie's obvious love of family slowly extends itself to the Japanese house and field helpers the Strouds receive permission to hire. The final surprise is the who and why of the murder itself. Dallas's terrific characters, unerring ear for regional dialects and ability to evoke the sights and sounds of the 1940s make this a special treat.
Publishers Weekly

Rennie Stroud looks back to 1942, when she was 13, to tell a powerful coming-of-age story. That year, the U.S. government opened a Japanese internment camp outside Ellis, CO, less than a mile from where Rennie and her family farmed sugar beets. Rennie observes the prejudice of some of the townspeople as well as her parents' strong moral code and their entanglement in the emotions of the time. Her father, Loyal, not only shows open support for the Japanese, whom he views as Americans, but offers to hire them to work on the farm. When a young girl is murdered, suspicion naturally turns to the camp, and the town is divided by fear. Dallas's strong, provocative novel is a moving examination of prejudice and fear that addresses issues of community discord, abuse, and rape. Her phrasing and language bring the 1940s to life, and she has created characters that will linger with the reader. As in her previous work, The Persian Pickle Club, Dallas emphasizes the need for women to form strong networks in order to survive emotionally. Highly recommended for book clubs and public libraries.
Lesa M. Holstine - Library Journal

(Adult/High School) Dallas has made a major contribution to a growing body of literature about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Based on the one camp in Colorado (named Amache, and renamed Tallgrass by the author), the story focuses on the impact it had on the local farmers and townspeople. It is told from the viewpoint of Rennie Stroud, 13, and poignantly portrays the emotional turmoil of both the internees and local residents. Suspicion, fear, anger, hatred, love, tenderness, pride, regret: Rennie adapts and readapts to all of these as her predictable life vanishes behind the reality of war, murder, and injustice. After a young local girl is killed, most of the town looks in one direction for the murderer. Rennie, blessed with wise and just parents, manages to rise above the prevailing rush to judgment. Part mystery, part historical fiction, part coming-of-age story, Tallgrass has all the elements of a tale well told: complex characters, intriguing plot, atmospheric detail, pathos, humor, and memorable turns of phrase. But most of all, the book offers a fresh look at a theme that can never be ignored: the interplay of good and evil within society and within people. —Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA
School Library Journal

(Starred review.) Dallas (New Mercies, 2005) based Tallgrass on Amache, a real-life World War II internment camp near Granada, Colorado. Here she renders a dramatic (and surprisingly droll) coming-of-age tale in which ignorance breeds malice, with brutal results. —Allison Block
Booklist

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.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Rennie’s parents caution her frequently not to lie. How well do they succeed in following their own advice? How akin is the way they keep large secrets (that Marthalice was pregnant, that Mary is very sick) to lying to their friends and daughter? Why do they draw the line against pretending Daisy was married before she got pregnant, but conspire with the sheriff to dupe the town later?

2. Tallgrass shows Rennie dealing with tough issues: rape, murder, prejudice, and danger to her family. How much of her opinions seem to come from her parents, and how much from her own observations? What did you think of her still being afraid of “the Japs,” even after she got to know and respect the Japanese her family had hired?

3. What is the importance of community to men and women in this book? Mary has the courage of her convictions and the love of her family, so why does she still care what other people think? Do you think she’s right to care?

4. Mary Stroud didn’t want the inmates of Tallgrass working on her farm. Why did she change her mind?

5. There are two funerals in Tallgrass: Susan Reddick’s and Harry Hirano. How are they similar? How are they different? How does each change Rennie’s view of the Japanese and her town?

6. In the 1940s, it was taken for granted that men acted and women talked. How much complicity do women have in the actions of their men: Mrs. Smith in her husband’s late-night raid on Tallgrass; Mrs. Snow in her husband’s descent into addiction and his treatment of her and Betty Joyce; Mrs. Reddick in her husband’s refusal to acknowledge Helen? Why do you think that Mary Stroud broke through the convention
to confront the men outside Tallgrass?

7. Why were Americans so frightened of Japanese- Americans during World War II—more than the German- and Italian-Americans? In her acknowledgments, Sandra Dallas mentions that she was inspired to write this book, in part, by the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay. What parallels do you see between them? What differences?

8. Did you recognize any characters from Sandra’s other books in Tallgrass?

(Questions issued by publisher. Do check out the complete reading guide with with historical background and maps. Very helpful.)

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