Heart Mountain by Gretel Ehrlich

Abstract

Reviews 259 tive of what happened where, perhaps because Cheuse tries to cover too many episodes from O’Keeffe’s life. Also, the pose in the framing device that some of the material is supposedly from Amy’s research into Ava’s life at times does not work, especially in the section entitled “Vermont”in which Michael recounts for Amy many things she knows from having been involved in them Still, the novel reads quickly. Some of its characters, such as Ava, her brother Robert, and her friend and his lover, Harriet Cardoza, come to life. It gives good descriptions of many places important to O’Keeffe’s life and works, especially places in Chicago; Canyon, Texas; New York City; and New Mexico. And it echoes some of O’Keeffe’s more interesting and lyrical statements about the light found in all of these places. RICHARD TUERK East Texas State University HeartMountain. By Gretel Ehrlich. (New York: Viking Penguin, 1989. 412 pages, $8.95.) Heart Mountain tells at least two stories about the internment ofJapaneseAmerican citizens during the Second World War, one from the Anglo-American perspective and one from that of a group of Japanese-Americans relocated there. Gretel Ehrlich attempts to probe the barriers between the two cultures, forced together in the unnatural relationship of captor and captives. Although her promise of insight into Japanese culture is not fulfilled, the stories arising out of the people residing near Heart Mountain are deftly told with compelling detail. One plot line follows McKay, a rancher who stayed on the farm while his brother enlisted in the army. His ranch borders on Heart Mountain, the site of aJapanese-American internment camp. After a hunting accident in which he mistakenly injures a camp internee, Abe-san, he meetsAbe-san’sgranddaughter Mariko, with whom he falls in love. Kai, a college student dislocated with his parents to Heart Mountain, narrates from the Japanese-American viewpoint. His story is told in italics, a constant reminder of his “otherness.” Ehrlich is ather best describing the people of the American west. Telling of a retarded boy unable to speak, she writes: “Willard felt the aqueous part of his mind jostling, and he reached for the sounds that make words but only faint squeals came out, and when they were gone, the words McKay had spoken settled on that interior lake the way mallards land on waters.”Ehrlich surprises the reader in this way several times a chapter. She is less successful in providing more than superficial knowledge of Japanese traditions in the Kai narrative. Abe-san, Mariko’s grandfather, is given the narrative task of explaining zen meditation in broken English. Kai’s story 260 WesternAmerican Literature lacksjust the sort of detail which makes McKay’sworld so believable, and comes nowhere near autobiographical accounts of life in the camps. For example, Shige Fujishima, in OurRecollections (East BayJapanese for Action, 1983),writes: Topaz was in a big desert. . . . Men gathered tree roots and branches, polished them with sandpaper and made flower stands and other decorative things. From time to time, the internees held exhibits of handicrafts, awarding honors. Everybody endeavored to win the first place, and there was keen competition. Itwas the onlyjoy to give solace to the people’s desolate hearts. Fictional accounts of these historical moments of anguish can offer insight into the broader political and racist forces which created the camps. Despite its shortcomings, Erlich’s novel should be commended for taking on this difficult material, a sorry portion of our national heritage which merits significantly more artistic attention. HELENA WHALEN-BRIDGE LosAngeles, California Light. By Seymour Epstein. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1989. 282 pages, $18.95.) Like many writers of the west, novelist Seymour Epstein (a teacher of writing at the University of Denver for eighteen years) seems fascinated by a frontier, and he deftly portrays the men and women who struggle to settle it. Epstein’s frontier, however, is not the disappearing frontier of the American west. Rather, it is the omnipresent frontier of human relationships where the struggle is to find, as the narrator of Light puts it, “a workable vision of life” which often seems “nowhere in sight...