America's Game
“The role of the storyteller, I’ve always believed, is to make the invisible visible. To tell the untold story, to shine a light on hidden truths.”
In his most recent novel, America’s Game, John H. Ritter spotlights the little known, often buried story of the cruel and unusual treatment U.S. citizens and immigrants alike faced in the Tule Lake War Relocation Center during WWII.
Available January 12, 2027
From Philomel – An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
America's Game
Kannon Suzuki 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, his father is taken away by the government, and no one knows where he’s been sent.
After many long months, Kannon, 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. The rough and fractured camp becomes a “segregation center,” and some twelve thousand prisoners, branded as “disloyal” arrive from the other nine camps. Meanwhile, the family’s plan to reunite takes a troubling turn.
The one silver lining? In the middle of the camp is a baseball field.
While Tule Lake splinters into opposing factions, Kannon joins 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 rise above the fears that divide us and to find common ground.
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Early praise for America's Game…
“America’s Game is a gripping historical novel that shines a light on a lesser-known aspect of World War II: the Tule Lake Japanese American incarceration experience and the existential role baseball played in the lives of imprisoned citizens.
“With his signature flair for fine prose, John H. Ritter delivers a compelling read, deftly weaving rich historical context with a poignant coming-of-age story as he follows a handful of young Japanese American citizens who suffer innumerable indignities and barbaric cruelties inflicted by the U.S. government and fueled by a paranoid, propagandized public.
Along the way, America’s Game reminds us just how important baseball, America’s game, can be.”
“Readers will ache as they read about the injustices these people endured, including the complex personal tolls they paid for ‘crimes’ they did not commit. The light at the heart of their bleak circumstance is the baseball diamond. Ritter shows how the sport became a beacon of hope, an almost sacred space where the prisoners could reclaim their humanity, build community, and prove their American identity in the face of overwhelming odds.
— Chris Crowe, IRA Award-winning author of Mississippi Trial, 1955