The Climate Of The Country Review

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(More customer reviews)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.

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