The Climate of the Country: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Riveting drama of love, politics, and history in WW II
Review: In Tule Lake Japanese Internment Camp, Esther and Denton Jordan must cope with their marriage, their politics and the shocking and terrifying violence that erupts among the unfairly imprisoned Japanese Americans. Denton's personal demons, both psychological and sexual, emerge under the stress.

Rating:
Summary: personal ethics on trial in an American concentration camp
Review: The Climate of the Country is a painful, difficult book to read; it deserves a wide audience but will probably become a staple to those who worry about social justice and agonize over our nation's heritage of racial oppression. Set in the bitter winter of 1943, the novel's admirable protagonists struggle not only for physical survival at the Tule Lake Relocation Camp, but attempt to live with decency, community values and individual morality. The novel's unusual perspective derives from its focus on Denton Jordan, a white conscientious objector married to a Jew. Jordan's sense of justice and empathy compel him to work with the displaced and despised Japanese-Americans (Nisei) and Japanese resident aliens (Issei). He lives a morally conflicted life, unsure of his own commitment to pacifism and wavering in his marriage. Exhausted and overwhelmed by a repressive camp administration and challenged by a surging and angry minority of prisoners who are abrasively challenging the very nature of their confinement, Jordan is a tremendously affecting character. The author's motivation to write derives directly from her own experience. Born in Tule Lake (as the first white born in that camp), Marnie Mueller has fashioned the central characters around her mother and father.

The novel is well written and the plot derives energy from the exceptional characterizations. Ms. Mueller's sense of detail and powerful descriptions of the physical nature of winter at Tule Lake combine to give her novel a sense of authenticity and urgency. My only reservation about this work is its tendency towards melodrama, especially in scenes where Jordan's marriage is disintegrating. Otherwise, Ms. Mueller's treatment of other signficant themes is superb. She directs our attention to the frustration articulate Jews felt at the silence of the national government to the Holocaust. She is wonderful in detailing the terrible inadequacies Jordan and Esther (his wife) carried in the face of their quite different childhoods.

Rating:
Summary: compelling simplicity
Review: The story is told with litle embellishment. At first the writing seems too straightforward, but as the story progresses you are drawn into the lives and ideas of the characters. The story seems to accurately portray life in our internment camps, and how it affected everyone. It gave me pause about the changing climate of our country, and to consider how I would react in similar circumstances. Ms. Meuller does not allow us simply answers to the questions she raises. And importantly, in the end - as with any great story - I wanted to know how the characters' lives continued.