The sad ending is likely to disappoint some readers, but its truthfulness enhances the credibility of Uchida's account of the Gold Hill colony. In the unflinching ending, the legal authorities refuse to help the colonists, and the hostility of racism overcomes the best intentions of the Japanese and their farmer neighbors. That racism can overcome good work and good intentions is not an uplifting message, and will likely disturb some readers. Yet anger is a valid emotional response to cruel racial prejudice. In the classroom in particular, the book's ending can be useful for generating discussion about how racism sometimes overwhelms more honorable points of view, and about how a tragic conclusion may be more memorable and meaningful than a happy one.

Although Uchida is generally evenhanded in her portrait of racism, she presents the Japanese more sympathetically than she does One-eye and other anti-Japanese racists...