In Our Midst

In Our Midst. By Nancy Jensen. Detroit, Michigan: Dzanc Books, 2020. Hardcover 352 pp. $26.95. 

Nancy Jensen’s In Our Midst, a fictionalized account of a German emigrant family’s experience in an American internment camp during World War II, is a terrific novel, one that leaves the audience asking questions and drawing parallels between the past and the present. 

The story focuses on the lives of the Austs, Nina and Otto, and their two sons, Kurt and Gerhard. At the opening of the novel, it’s early December 1941, and these German emigres are celebrating St. Nikolas Day at their restaurant in Newman, Indiana. The Austs are a welcoming and generous family. Their sons’ Kurt and Gerhard are teenagers that have enthusiastically mapped out their futures in America. 

The merriment of the German holiday is disrupted the moment the radio streams the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. (The date is St. Nikolas Day, December 6, 1941, so this does represent an error in the story.) The next day, Nina is taken into custody without explanation and kept away from her family. Most of her community are wary and suspicious because the government is instructed to keep an eye on “alien enemies.” It is assumed that all foreigners from a warring nation must be spies or worse. Prejudices, not impartiality, informs the masses. When Nina returns to her ransacked restaurant, her family is gone. 

Thus, begins a journey told from the perspectives of both Nina and Otto, separately at first, then together. Before settling into their respective camps, the three Aust men are shuffled to various holding centers together. Eventually, Otto goes with Kurt to North Dakota, and Gerhard goes to Tennessee. Otto and Kurt are faced with harsh weather climes, and Gerhard is entrenched in a damp camp that is deleterious to his health. In due course, the government decides to allow detained families to gather together in internment camps. There is a caveat, however, as Nina must willingly sign her freedom away for an indeterminable amount of time. 

Nina joins her beloved family at the Crystal City internment camp, in Texas. The reunion is joyful but tempered with the reality that they face deportation at the slightest misstep. Their new home is nothing like what they had in Indiana. Here they will face a host of dangers they never knew, to include hostile Nazis, suspicious neighbors, scorpions, limited provisions, and rotating camp directors with their own agendas. Their youngest son, still recovering from the ill effects of the Tennessee camp, is incapable of the physical demands placed on the men of the camp. He soon becomes the target of an evil contingency within the camp. The culminating crisis forces Otto to make a life altering decision, one that changes all of their lives forever. 

In the last chapter, “Historical Context for In Our Midst,” the author includes proof of the facts that form the basis for her novel (350-353). For multiple decades, few Americans knew about the internment of the Japanese Americans during World War II. How many are still unaware of the fact that there were German or Italian Americans in internment camps? Or, that they were considered “alien enemies” by our government? President Roosevelt said, “I don’t care much about the Italians. They’re a lot of opera singers. But the Germans are different; they may be dangerous.” Even before hostilities broke out, J Edgar Hoover “had, for as long as five years, been preparing a secret Custodial Detention Index (CDI), cataloging the names, addresses, professions, and social affiliations of thousands of people of German, Italian, and Japanese ancestry residing in the United States.” Hoover reportedly “described the index as a list of people ‘to be apprehended and interned immediately upon the outbreak of hostilities.’” 

In Our Midst is engaging and beautifully rendered. There were numerous instances where I stopped to read lines over and over again simply because they created such beautiful images and sounds. For example, here, just before the radio announces the bombing at Pearl Harbor: 

“For a few moments, it was quiet, as if the snow had fallen inside the restaurant, covering everything in deep drifts, absorbing even the sound of their breath.” (9) 

And here, visiting a memory of when her son and his best friend would make music together in their restaurant: 

“Her heart’s memory knew what was coming—and there it was. Soft pulses, growing stronger. The voices rose again. They called to each other, in tones now edged like knives, drew in toward the center, and crossed—discordant. Stunned, only one voice survived. It could be any of them.” (65) 

If you enjoy reading historical literary fiction In Our Midst will not disappoint.

-Laura Metzger, BR/BR Editor