Greenwood Riven

· V.L. Purvis-Smith
Ebook
549
Pages

About this ebook

Greenwood County’s Mexican, Japanese, and Anglo enclaves coexist in an uneasy truce on Colorado’s High Plains, until Japan attacks Pearl Harbor. A sign appears in the barbershop window: “Japs Shaved Free-Not Responsible for Accidents-25 cents for a Jap Ear.” Decades before talk of building a great wall on the southern border or registering Muslims, Greenwood was riven.

Art and Martha Lundgren, still grieving their baby’s death, covertly maintain friendships with Japanese on nearby farms. Having lost hired hands to the service and struggling to meet food production goals, they turn to the Marquez family for help. 

When construction begins on Camp Amache, an internment site for thousands of Japanese forcibly relocated from the West Coast, Greenwood erupts in protest. Martha confronts violence against her Japanese neighbors and investigates the suspected internment of former residents, decisions that threaten her family’s reputation, and her life.

About the author

This historical novel grows out of V.L. (Ginny) Purvis-Smith’s desire to portray the forever-present tensions between America’s immigrant groups, in this case, in the life of a rural community enduring the stress of World War II and the construction of a nearby Japanese internment camp. Ginny grew up on a Colorado farm replete with coal stove, outhouse, and milk cows. Her aunts cautioned that, because women were too often widowed at a young age with children to support, education and a profession might guarantee survival.

She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and a Master of Divinity degree from McCormick Theological Seminary. She served churches in the Midwest and on the East Coast, worked as a hospital and university chaplain, directed an English language program in Sénégal, West Africa, and taught English composition in Michigan and The Bahamas. Prior to graduate school, she was a special education teacher and administered employee insurance programs.

Ginny lives with her husband near Denver, Colorado.

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