Hesse ( The Girl in the Blue Coat) draws Margot and Haruko realistically and sympathetically, bolstered by research into WWII internment camps, in a moving book that successfully describes an unjust aspect of U.S. Camp life, with its daily indignities and occasional tragedies, grows tense, and the two girls find their friendship intensifying. Army’s Japanese division, and wonders what her father had to do with her family’s relocation Margot’s father finds himself courted by Nazi idealists as their situation worsens, and her pregnant mother fears yet another miscarriage. Both are experiencing family problems: Haruko worries about her brother, who is serving in the U.S. (The camp differs from WWII War Relocation Authority–run camps to which West Coast Japanese residents were relocated en masse, an author’s note explains.) Although the two groups in the Texas camp rarely mix, the young women are immediately drawn to each other. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.In 1944, 17-year-old Japanese-American Haruko, from Colorado, and German-American Margot, from Iowa, are imprisoned with their families in a Department of Justice–run internment camp for “enemy aliens” suspected by the U.S. This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Riveting and meticulously researched, this story reverberates with authentic voices as it explores adolescent growth under dreadful circumstances. The War Outside highlights a blight on our country’s past-the forced imprisonment of American citizens without a trial-and Hesse’s story packs a gut-wrenching wallop as a result.Īuthor of the multiple award-winning novel Girl in the Blue Coat, Hesse offers a subtle promise in her new novel-to remember and never repeat this history. Margot feels empathy for Haruko, but she doesn’t share her own secrets because she thinks they are too awful and that revealing them would drive Haruko away. Alienated from all that is familiar, Haruko slowly reveals her fears for her brother’s safety as he serves in the Japanese-American fighting unit. Inexorably drawn to each other, they continue to meet in secret. We meet Haruko and Margot, both students at the Federal high school in the camp. When a dust storm forces the girls to shelter together, they overcome the mores of the camp and forge a tenuous bond. In The War Outside, its 1944 and were taken to Crystal City, a family internment camp that houses both Japanese and German Americans accused of colluding with enemies of the United States.

Two young women meet in a World War II internment camp in Texas for “enemy aliens”-those suspected of colluding with the Axis-but because Margot is German-American and Haruko is Japanese-American, the two teens cannot openly be friends. Monica Hesse’s The War Outside pierces the heart with its exceptional story of family, friends and country.

The war outside by monica hesse