PROPERTIES OF THIRST by Marianne Wiggins

The heart of this story is Schiff, an American Jewish lawyer from the Department of the Interior.  He has been assigned the unpleasant task of setting up the Manzanar Internment Camp in California shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Members of the filthy rich Rhodes family, whose land near the camp is being appropriated for a landing strip, are the supporting characters.  The patriarch is Rocky Rhodes (!), who is in a constant battle with the Los Angeles Water Department, who have helped themselves to the snow runoff in his valley.  Sunny Rhodes, Rocky’s daughter, owns a restaurant in town, and sparks fly between her and Schiff, although she is engaged to someone else.  What really lights up the page, though, is the dialog between Schiff and anyone else, and scenes that don’t involve Schiff are somewhat dry.  Fortunately, such scenes are infrequent.  This book stretches to over 500 pages, but I would have gladly followed Schiff for 500 more, especially since we are left with loose ends galore.  There is so much to savor here, though.  It has love, conflict, oppression, compassion, heartbreak, suspense—all wrapped in splendid prose.  The Japanese internment camp may be the reason that all these characters come together, but it is not really the centerpiece of the novel.  That honor belongs to the landscape and the characters, who do everything they can to lessen the severe hardship of the people whose lives have been upended by an event that they neither invited nor condoned.