University of Arkansas Press Publishes Camp Nine

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas Press has published Camp Nine, a novel by Arkansas native Vivienne Schiffer. The book, which Publisher’s Weekly called a “finely wrought debut novel,” is set in the fictional town of Rook, Ark., based on Rohwer, Ark., the site of a World War II relocation center created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1942 signing of Executive Order 9066.

This order authorized the military to ban anyone from certain areas of the country, with primary focus on the West Coast. Eventually the order was used to relocate 120,000 people of Japanese descent to internment camps such as the Rohwer Relocation Center in remote Desha County, Ark., the area that Vivienne Schiffer is originally from.

The life of Chess Morton, the novel’s narrator, is significantly affected by the nearby internment camp as she becomes involved with two young internees and an American soldier mysteriously connected to her mother’s past. As Chess watches the struggles and triumphs of these strangers and sees her mother seek justice for these people who came briefly and involuntarily to call the Arkansas Delta their home, she discovers surprising and disturbing truths about her family’s painful past.

Delphine Hirasuna, author of The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942–1946, said Camp Nine “beautifully captures a sense of time and place that resonates with authenticity.” Fellow Arkansas writer Grif Stockley, author of Ruled by Race: Black/White Relations in Arkansas from Slavery to the Present, said of the book, “Through the prisms of place, family, race, class, power, and privilege, Vivienne Schiffer skillfully constructs a necessarily complicated portrait of the era into a meaningful mosaic and satisfying story.”

Vivienne Schiffer is a novelist and screenwriter who has practiced law in Houston for many years. She will be reading and signing Camp Nine at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 8, at Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston; from 5 to 7 p.m. Nov. 17 at Enterprise Books at Dewitt, Ark., and she’ll be appearing at the Arkansas Literary Festival, April 12-15, 2012, in Little Rock.