The Interlopers by Griffing Bancroft. Bancroft Co. (1917), 397 pp.
Just out of Harvard Medical School, Robert Hollington arrives in Rosario, a small and prosperous agricultural community near San Diego, to assume the practice of highly respected Dr. Alling. Hollington has much to get used to, but his main challenge is earning the trust of his new neighbors, especially influential rancher Sam Coulters, whose daughter Frances quickly catches his eye. Hollington’s helpfulness during a ferocious storm wins him friends. But it also obliterates the local citrus crop and leaves several ranchers with no way to make mortgage payments. With the help of realtor J. P. Butler, the Nippon Merchandise Company seizes the opportunity to purchase land for Japanese immigrants. Residents fear the new arrivals will ruin the life they have known.
Bancroft presents a complicated take on Japanese immigration, farming and land ownership, which California ranchers saw as major social and economic threats in the early decades of the last century. He introduces a variety of characters and story lines to delineate the issue, often moving away from Hollington to illustrate different aspects of the question. Bancroft sympathizes with the white folks. But he ascribes no devious motives to the Japanese (unlike Wallace Irwin in Seed of the Sun) and assigns a measure of responsibility to the white businessmen who profit from the situation. The most interesting conflict is represented by Hollington, who must weigh his duty to the Japanese as human beings against his obligation to the community as a threatened entity. The book probably attempts to do too much. Even a writer more accomplished than Bancroft -- this was his only novel -- might have struggled to put everything together. Although it may not be entirely successful, the book is an important document in the ongoing story of race relations in California.
Just out of Harvard Medical School, Robert Hollington arrives in Rosario, a small and prosperous agricultural community near San Diego, to assume the practice of highly respected Dr. Alling. Hollington has much to get used to, but his main challenge is earning the trust of his new neighbors, especially influential rancher Sam Coulters, whose daughter Frances quickly catches his eye. Hollington’s helpfulness during a ferocious storm wins him friends. But it also obliterates the local citrus crop and leaves several ranchers with no way to make mortgage payments. With the help of realtor J. P. Butler, the Nippon Merchandise Company seizes the opportunity to purchase land for Japanese immigrants. Residents fear the new arrivals will ruin the life they have known.
Bancroft presents a complicated take on Japanese immigration, farming and land ownership, which California ranchers saw as major social and economic threats in the early decades of the last century. He introduces a variety of characters and story lines to delineate the issue, often moving away from Hollington to illustrate different aspects of the question. Bancroft sympathizes with the white folks. But he ascribes no devious motives to the Japanese (unlike Wallace Irwin in Seed of the Sun) and assigns a measure of responsibility to the white businessmen who profit from the situation. The most interesting conflict is represented by Hollington, who must weigh his duty to the Japanese as human beings against his obligation to the community as a threatened entity. The book probably attempts to do too much. Even a writer more accomplished than Bancroft -- this was his only novel -- might have struggled to put everything together. Although it may not be entirely successful, the book is an important document in the ongoing story of race relations in California.
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