America's Game

As World War II rages across the world, Kannon’s life is torn apart at home. With baseball as his only outlet, he’s left to wonder whether his family will ever be reunited—and whether his world will ever be the same.

Kannon has lived his whole life in Hawaii as part of a tight-knit Japanese community. He cherishes his family, his traditions, and most of all, baseball, which has always served as a bond between him and his father. But after Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Kannon’s whole life is upended: His father is taken away by the government, and no one will tell his family where they’ve taken him.

After many long months, Kannon and his mother and sister are told that they can find him at the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California. There they travel, hoping to reunite their family. Little do they know what danger awaits. First, the rough and fractured camp becomes a “segregation center.” Next, some twelve thousand prisoners, branded as disloyal—“the worst of the worst”—arrive from the other nine camps. And meanwhile, the family’s plan to reunite with Father takes a troubling turn.

The one silver lining? In the middle of the camp is a baseball field.

As Tule Lake splinters into opposing—and often violent—factions, Kannon teams up with new friends Naomi and Tomo to build an unusual baseball team. Following Naomi’s dream, the team secretly sends out a challenge, one they hope will unify a deeply divided camp while showing the entire country what it means to be American.

In this powerful, touching, and dramatic novel based on real events by award-winning author John H. Ritter, America’s pastime is so much more than a simple game: It is a chance to find common ground and to rise above the fears that divide us.