Camp Nine

October 17, 2011
In Schiffer's finely wrought debut novelâset in Rook, Ark. in 1942â12-year old Chess Morton's quiet life of plantations and bayous changes abruptly after her wealthy landowning grandfather sells some worthless land to the government. Housing 10,000 new residents, Camp Nine becomes one of many camps where West Coast Japanese were held in isolation during WWII. Chess's bored widowed mother, who had studied art in California, offers to teach art classes to the Japanese. After she enlists a reluctant Chess to help her, mother and daughter become friends with the Matsui family, including sons Henry and David. Henry enlists, but his father is imprisoned for failing to correctly answer a government questionnaire. Mrs. Matsui, shunned by the other women because they felt her husband brought dishonor to his family, has a nervous breakdown, and David attempts to romance a daughter from a hard-scrabble white sharecropper family. As she watches her mother thwart local conventions by championing the Japanese, Chess matures. Schiffer immerses readers in the thick bayou air and community tensions.

Starred review from November 1, 2011
Narrated by young Cecilia Chess Morton, this novel personalizes the experiences of detainees and neighbors of a WWII Japanese American internment camp. In the summer of 1942, Camp Nine is built on land in the Arkansas delta that had been willed to 12-year-old Chess by her late father, the scion of the Morton plantation's owner. Then come surprises, as the camp is filled not with German POWs, as nearby residents expected, but with nearly 10,000 Japanese Americans from California. And the officer in charge of the camp is Colonel Tom Jefferies, who once had a relationship with Chess' mother, Carrie, the daughter of Italian immigrants from the wrong side of the bayou, whose relationship with her wealthy in-laws is still prickly. Wanting to integrate Camp Nine into the community, Carrie starts teaching and attending mass there, becoming particularly close to the Matsui family, whose two teenage sons and Chess establish close friendships. Issues of race, class, and loyalty oaths arise as the poor white community's views of Carrie's activities turn negative, and the Klan becomes more assertive. A compelling, vivid account of a shameful episode that should not be forgotten.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)