I thought I was about to dive into a cozy romance. Nope! It opened up in court where a Japanese, Kabuo Miyamoto, was on trial for the murder of another islander, a gill-netter, Carl Heine. Crap! I can’t stand law and order and courtroom novels. BUT, this one’s different. I ended up loving it. The story is actually told in-between witnesses, and boy was it told. The author had done incredible research to tell this story. Every aspect of it was so real and true, from the lives of the islanders, young love, the experience of the Japanese concentration camps, to the racism against the Japanese in the 1950’s, which was still strong after the bombing of Pearl Harbor just ten years earlier. He did great in setting the scene for Washington and making you feel like you were there.

There was no reading through pages and pages of court proceedings. Although, I felt he could have left out the “retelling” of the whole murder incident by the journalist on the last several pages that seemed to go on and on.

The story is set in 1954, September 15 and 16th to be exact, on fictitious San Piedro Island in Washington. (This island is said to actually be based on the real Bainbridge Island.)

In 1940’s, Kabuo’s father had made arrangements with Carl’s father, Carl Sr., to purchase 7 acres of land for growing strawberries at a time when it was unlawful for Japanese, or any foreigners, to even own land in the U.S. Carl’s mother, Etta, was as racist as they came and never wanted Carl Sr. to sell any of their land to the Japanese, but the agreement was made and was to be completed by the time Kabuo was to become a citizen of the U.S.

The Miyamoto’s couldn’t make the last two payments because of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the war with Japan. All the Japanese around the U.S. were being rounded up and sent to concentration camps. This included the Miyamoto’s and all the other Japanese on the island. Unfortunately, during this time, Carl Sr. died of a heart-attack and Etta sold the strawberry land out from underneath the Miyamoto’s.

It’s now 1954, and Etta's son, Carl Jr., is found dead. He was found drowned and all tangled up in his gill net with a big gash and cracked skull behind his left ear. They believed it was murder, and they believed Kabuo, Carl’s long-time friend, who had his land stolen out from under him by this family, was the culprit. The evidence seemed to be piling up against him, and so was the prejudice.

Ishmael Chambers, a journalist, is very interested in this case because he and Kabuo’s wife, Hatsue, had a young-love, secret affair while in high school. Ishmael was sent off to war to fight the Japanese and Hatsue was sent off to a concentration camp with her family. Their love would never be. It was absolutely forbidden, but Ishmael was trapped inside his own head after coming back from the war with only one arm and having lost Hatsue. He never married and never had children. Hatsue had moved on. She married and now had three children by Kabuo and living life back on the island.

At the end of the trial, Ishmael had gone to the U.S. Coast Guard station and researched what exactly the weather and ships in the channel were doing the night of Carl’s death. He found evidence that there was a ship that had been re-routed through the Shipping Channel and would definitely have caused a wake that ended up knocking Carl off the boat and killing him, but was holding back that information until he realized what a loser he was, in life in general, and how bad he must have appeared to Hatsue. He ended up doing the right thing because it was the descent thing to do as a human-being, but also to prove to himself (and maybe even to Hatsue) that he was worth more than just printing school and town functions and advertisements in his father’s newspaper, which he had taken over after his father’s death. This evidence caused the judge to declare a mistrial and the case was thrown out of court, giving Kabuo back his life.
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MOVIE: "Snow Falling on Cedars" (1999), starring Ethan Hawke as Ishmael Chambers (Journalist) and others I don't really know.

Guterson really knows how to tell a story! I liked how he gave background information on the characters because it really built the characters and gave an excellent history to help the reader understand where the writer was going with the events.

It was an all right book, but the author seemed to talk about things that had nothing to do with the plotline, therefore losing my attention.

As this story unfolded, I found myself sympathizing with all the characters: Kabuo's prideful endurance of racism, Ishmael's broken spirit, Carl's position between his defiant mother and what he knew was right, and Hatsue's pull between youthful romance and the expectations of her culture. What touched me most was Ishmael's story, his broken heart and his fear in war. I felt so sad for him.

The fog-covered island was a beautiful setting for these rich, interlacing stories of people trying to make sense of what the war had done to their lives. I could feel the emotion in this community that pulled me back into the '50s where veterans could not forget the war nor could interment camp refugees forget their wrongs. Combine the laconic personality of fishermen with an era known for putting on your best face and all these underlying currents of hate and resentment are bound to explode.

I found myself going back and forth about my suspicion of guilt as the mystery unfolded. The pacing of the mystery was well done. I did however find myself skimming overly descriptive, or even re-descriptive paragraphs, and some of the repetitive trial dialogue. I think the book could have been shortened by a good hundred pages, all that lengthy description of boats and houses and ceders, and still been powerful.

Kevin Ansbro, author of Kinnara, reminded me of this book...( having just read "The Translation in Love".
Although both stories are different...the history is heartwrenching of how the American - and Canadian- Japanese were treated during and post WWII.

I just saw that the author has a new book of 'short stories' coming out. "Snow Falling on Cedars" was a beautiful book. I must have read it before I was a Goodreads member -- (I still remember his 'writing'). Always did want to read another book by this author!

"Ich sage es, weil ich als alter Mann dazu neige, die Dinge im Licht des Todes zu sehen, also ganz anders als Sie. Ich bin wie ein Reisender vom Mars, der mit Erstaunen sieht, was hier vorgeht. Und was ich sehe, das ist die immer gleiche menschliche Schwäche, die von einer Generation an die nächste weitergegeben wird. Immer und immer die gleiche traurige menschliche Schwäche. Wir hassen einander; wir sind das Opfer unvernünftiger Ängste. Und nichts im Strom der Menschheitsgeschichte lässt hoffen, dass wir daran etwas ändern werden. [...] Werden Sie nun Teil jener gleichgültigen Mächte sein, die sich verschworen haben, unablässig auf das Unrecht hinzuarbeiten? Oder werden Sie sich gegen diese endlose Strömung stemmen, ihr trotzen und wahrhaft menschlich sein?"

It's My Cousin Vinny meets Stephen King's It meets Chasing Amy (or 1000 Days of Summer.) Like My Cousin Vinny, the backdrop is a trial with quirky characters, a defendant that's been railroaded by cultural prejudice and some wildly coincidental evidentiary twists and turns. In this case, the defendant is a Japanese-American fisherman named Kabuo living in post-WWII Washington State. So while he's a native to the area, he's as much an outsider as Vinny's Yankee cousins are in the deep south.

But, much like Steven King's It, this is the story of a community rotting from the inside. But while a malevolent clown pulled the strings of hate and fear in small town Maine, it's the legacy of war that fuels small-town Washington's prejudice.

But while this novel is full of thoughtfully drawn characters and gripping description of war, internment camps and small-town life, it falls into a thematic trap I more closely associate with naively intellectual romantic comedies. The novel's main character, Ishmael, is a white, straight, intellectual, upper-middle class, sensitive man in his thirties (WSIUSMT) who is in love with the defendant's wife, Hatsue. His sense of justice tells him to help reach an acquittal, but Hatsue is his childhood sweetheart and he still loves her so, so maybe, just maybe, if her husband were to go to prison, he could have her back.

That the story focuses more on a WSIUSMT (perhaps the most well-fed of all modern archetypes) in a book about subtle prejudice and the Japanese-American experience is a minor annoyance. There are a host of well-drawn characters here so a little patriarchal idealism doesn't poison the well. The problem is that the central conflict turns around whether the WSIUSMT will do the obviously right thing. This triggered a similar reaction in me as when I watched 1000 Days of Summer (or Chasing Amy) where I found myself audibly reacting; 'Just get over yourself dude! Movie solved!' as the otherwise likable WSIUSMT grumbles and pouts.

I loved this book. It was a slow start for me but then I really began to enjoy it. I liked the way that the writer gave such detail and background to all the characters; this helped to build the story and for me to feel as if I knew them. It has a lot of themes; murder, prejudice, hatred and humanity. I will now have to check out his other books.

I loved the writing and the subject.

This book grabbed me and wouldn't let me go ... at first. I had a hard time putting it down and doing required things to love, like eating and sleeping. But near the end of the book, it began to lose me. Let me elaborate.

The book begins with a murder trial 10 years after World War II. On a tiny island in the United Sattes called San Piedro Sound, murder hasn't been as issue in many years. But a fisherman is dead, and foul play seems to be involved.

The suspest is a Japanese American who lost land when Pearl Harbor was attacked and all the Japanese Americans were taken away from the island for awhile. The dead fisherman's mother did not sell him the land he had been promised after WWII, and the town believes he is still resentful for this. Also at the heart of the matter is the fact that even though Pearl Harbor and World War II ended a decade ago, the tension is still there on this tiny island.

The other main part that we learn about is the wife of the murder suspect, who in her youth was in love with a white boy on the island. She knew her Japanese American family would never accept her marrying a white boy and so she married a JA man. Her love went to war and fought the Japanese-as he said, "I killed people that look like you."

All of this was beautifully written and spellbinding. However, I was disappointed with the way the relationship between the two young lovers played out, and the end of the book suddenly turned into a detective novel instead of a story about forgiveness, love, and forgetting the past. And although the two main stories were tied together in the end, I don't think they were tied together in a way that worked for me.

I want to see the movie and see if it leaves me feeling more complete ...

In my quest to read more books from my library, once again I have just read a beautiful autographed gem from my bookshelves, Snow Falling on Cedars, a debut novel by David Guterson first published in 1994. The story takes place on the fictional island of San Piedro, an island of rugged and spectacular beauty in Puget Sound, renowned for its salmon fishing and strawberry farming. The book highlights the treatment of Japanese citizens during World War II in the American West, such as internment camps splitting families of Japanese descent. Snow Falling on Cedars highlights their treatment during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s in the Pacific Northwest. This is a very lyrical and atmospheric novel as it evokes throughout the richness and raw beauty of the sea and the land, and sometimes even its people, as well as its inherent danger.

The year is 1954 but the shadow of World War II is present in the courtroom where Kabuo Miyamoto’s trial is underway for the brutal killing of a fellow salmon fisherman, Carl Heine. Ishmael Chambers, who lost an arm in the Pacific war now runs the island newspaper inherited from his father and is one of the reporters covering the trial. It is this trial that brings him close once again to Hatsu Miyamoto, the wife of the accused man and his boyhood love. But now, as a heavy snowfall surrounds and impedes the progress of Kabuo Miyamoto’s trial, a decorated war veteran, they all must come to a reckoning, not only with the past, but with culture, nature, and love. It was said best on the cover of my book: ”Both suspenseful and beautifully crafted, ‘Snow Falling on Cedars’ portrays the psychology of a community, the ambiguities of justice, the racism that persists even between neighbors, and the necessity of individual moral action despite the indifference of nature and circumstance.”

Ishmael, reflecting on his father as he sat in his study admiring the desk that his father had built himself from a vast expanse of cherry wood, the size of an English baron’s dining table with smoked glass covering much of it. As he stared at his bookcases with collected Shakespeare, Jefferson essays, Thoreau, Paine, Hawthorn, Twain and Dickens, he thought of his father and how he ran the newspaper noting that he was an anguished editorialist incapable of fully indulging himself when it came to condemnation.

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”For he’d recognized limits and the grayness of the world, which is what endeared him to island life, limited as it was by surrounding waters, which imposed upon islanders certain duties and conditions foreign to mainlanders. An enemy on an island is an enemy forever, he’d been fond of reminding his son. There was no blending into an anonymous background, no neighboring society to shift toward. Islanders were required, by the very nature of their landscape, to watch their step moment by moment. No one trod easily upon the emotions of another where the sea licked everywhere against an endless shoreline.”

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Ik weet niet wat het punt van dit boek had moeten zijn, maar ik heb het niet gevonden.