I read this as a teenager. It broke me. Maybe I should reread to see if I still think as highly of it.

There isn't anything that I can write that will properly describe this book. The characters, the scenery, the crime and the trial are all together described with beauty and it will leave a powerful impression on you.
The anti-Japanese attitudes that were rampant in this time are a major part of the story and the author does a phenomenal job of conveying this honestly.

3.5 stars, though it says differently above. Worth reading, and owning, but perhaps I should have bought it on sale. Reviewing this book is taking me a good amount of time after finishing it. There are many things that I think ought to be said about the book, but I am unsure how they all fit together. In addition to this, I have to keep myself unaware of the award-status and the fact that my grandfather was a navyman and a sailor at heart.

The language is rough but rhythmic, representative of the typical life he seeks to represent. The vocabulary, though mostly good, does seem - especially in the first quarter - a little overdone, as if he is deliberately trying to use words instead of letting them flow out of his impetus. However, this does not drag the book.

What does drag the book, I feel, are three things in particular: two parts objective, one thing entirely subjective. First the subjective: I do not particularly enjoy courtroom novels (as might be seen from my star-reviews of Grisham). Next, the objective: I felt that at times it was languid, that parts were unnecessary, inefficient, unnecessary and eventually functioning as writer's slack in order to keep him thinking for future material. I found myself regularly checking to see how long I had to go for the chapter, and it was regularly 6-7 pages before finish. There were parts that seemed forced, as if he felt he had to come up with something brilliant when such was not required, and thus those times sounded inauthentic from him as an author. The third thing is, frankly, that there are nuances I believe are inconsistent with the background of whole groups of characters; for example, Buddhist tenets are misrepresented, even reversed once, to fit the mindset of the character in question. Perhaps this is on purpose, but if it was to be purported as fact, it was incorrect and took a little of the momentum away.

However, there is much about the book that keeps it sleek and enjoyable. One is the character development, that as far as I can tell is quite accurate for the personalities he chooses, and he maintains a sense of mystery about persons, so that one never fully knows any of them - this is accurate, realistic, and appreciable. Again the tone and flow is also well-representative of the setting which he seeks to portray. (Albeit, it is an entirely fictional setting; San Piedro Island cannot be visited, which affords him great leeway in character development as well. This last bit is perhaps a drawback to the full potential of his skill.) In addition to these things, his careful use of language, his ability to shift back and forth to be accurate about completely polar opposite opinions held by the characters, the flow of the storyline and graceful swtiching of the grammatical tenses (which was by far the strongest aspect of the writing - I found myself frequently engrossed in something and then all of sudden wondering how I got there, which means he lost me enough to stop paying attention to his writing ability altogether): all of these make this a book worth reading and keeping.

Being awarded the Faulkner is what drew me to it, but it may be the case as well that there was not as much fierce competition as of late. For all of these things, I gave it the rating above. A well-written novel, and worth enjoying. At the very least, being from a distinctly Northwestern voice, it made me crave blueberries and coffee!

This PEN/Faulkner winning novel employs a narrative technique that distinguishes it. The tale is told from the points of view of the cast of characters. From their viewpoints the tale unfolds and we come to know the characters themselves more intimately because of their roles in relating the tale. Faulkner used this same approach in As I Lay Dying in which a group of travelers narrate their perspectives in the course of arduous travel. Chaucer likewise in The Canterbury Tales. The structure hinges around the murder trial of a Japanese-American who fought on the European front for the Allies during WWII. Unobtrusive flashbacks take us inside the minds of the characters as the tale unravels in an otherwise straight-ahead narrative style. The author's descriptions were quite beautifully moving and complete and finely drawn. The allusions to the snowfall during a great storm were a cohesive leitmotif repeated throughout the novel. The dialogue was, I found, a little uneven and a few of the characters seemed a little flat. However, the novel has heart and the primary characters rise to meet the harsh crises that life sends their way with dignity and honor and grace. The novel deals intelligently and unsentimentally about the subject of bias during a painful epoch for Asian-Americans. I would rate the novel between four and five stars: just shy of great for this appealing mainstream novel.

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 ...

Hatsui’s mother gathered her five daughters together, Hisao’s letters in her hand. She told her daughters, once again, the story of her odyssey from Japan on board the Korea Maru. She told them about the Seattle rooms she had cleaned, the sheets on which white men had vomited blood, the toilets full of their excrement, the stench of their alcohol and sweat. She told them about the waterfront cookhouse where she’d worked chopping onions and frying potatoes for hakujin stevedores who looked right through her as if she weren’t even there. She knew, already, about hardship, she said—her life had long been difficult. She knew what it was to be alive without being alive; she knew what it was to be invisible.

It was pure happenstance that I read Snow Falling on Cedars just one month after the death of George Floyd and the beginning of renewed racial protests, but it could not have been timelier. David Guterson’s first novel takes place on the fictional island of San Piedro, one of the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington, where the residents support themselves through salmon fishing and berry farming. The story takes place in 1954, just eight years after the end of World War II. The novel opens in the middle of a trial, although it will take a while before we learn the crime of which the defendant has been accused and the nature of the evidence against him. Guterson reveals this information in the form of flashbacks.

A salmon fisherman named Carl Heine is found floating dead and entangled in his boat’s gill net in the waters off San Piedro. It initially appears to be an accident, but suspicions soon arise. Another fisherman, a Japanese-American named Kabuo Miyamoto, is accused of the crime and put on trial for Carl’s murder. The Miyomotos are one of the many families of Japanese descent on the island. Evidence confirms that Miyomoto boarded Heine’s boat on the night he died. The trial begins in the winter of 1954, just as a violent and beautiful snowstorm ferociously whips the island. Among the trial’s observers is Ishmael Chambers, a war veteran who runs the local newspaper, which he inherited from his father. Ishmael was once in love with Hatsue Miyamoto, Kabuo's wife, and he has never come to terms with losing her. A former Marine who lost an arm while fighting the Japanese, Chambers’s obsession has left him bitter. His mother tells him, “You went numb, Ishmael, and you’ve stayed numb all these years.”

As the trial begins, old passions and prejudices surface. Upon examining the body, the local coroner suggests that the sheriff look for "a Jap with a bloody gun butt". Kabuo’s stoic bearing revives anti-Japanese prejudices that were only lightly buried in the nine years since the war’s end, even though Kabuo and other Japanese were born and raised on the island and fought for the United States during the war. Flashbacks reveal that Hatsue and others in San Piedro’s Japanese community were exiled to a government internment camp. The Japanese also have their own grounds for resentment stemming from years of bigotry. We learn that Kabuo was effectively robbed of land that his father had worked for years. Kabuo’s father had made all but the last payment on seven acres of land they were in the process of buying from the Heine family. Heine’s mother, Etta, sold the land to another farmer—a legalized injustice. Just as Ishmael Chambers is obsessed with Hatsue, Kabuo is obsessed with getting back the land that his family lost.

What sets Snow Falling on Cedars apart from other courtroom dramas is the beautiful writing. Guterson describes the beauty of the islands and the inner life of every major character. His writing captures the moods of the sea, forest, and fields, as well as the details of the lives of the fishermen and farmers. The snowstorm intensifies the islander’s isolation. He has carefully researched every essential detail of fishing, farming, and of Japanese American culture. He carefully describes the nature of the islanders’ relationships, their suspicions, and resentments. And he beautifully depicts the painful legacy of the war and the community's struggle to deal with that pain.

Guterson compels us to ask larger questions about the nature of truth, guilt, justice, morality and responsibility. He deftly explores the dangerous undercurrents of prejudice and fear that disturb the seemingly placid surface of life on San Piedro Island. How can people in a small, tightly-knit community be neighbors for generations, even love one another, yet be torn apart by racism? As the father of an adopted son from Asia, it’s a question that is rarely far from my mind these days.

If there was a choice for 3 1/2 stars, that is what I would choose. To me this book deserved more than just three stars, yet four may not reflect my true feelings for the story. It was not until I was nearing 100 pages did I start enjoying the book. From there I loved it. Yet in the last 100 pages it lost momentum for me again.

The stongest message of the book were the consequences of loss forced upon individuals because of prejudice and hysteria. It's unfair. So unfair. We're all just trying the live the happiest lives we can. No one should be denied the right.

If you're thinking these themes might be introduced overbearingly, they're not. There is a plot. The characters are well developed. This I liked.

PS--There is some rather descriptive sexual content, not gratutious but there nonetheless.

Все это время, смотря на обложку, думала, что это что-то про любовь. Когда прочитала жанры — что это полицейский детектив. Когда послушала часть книги — поняла, что это историческая проза, а я такое обожаю.

Очень зимняя тоскливая книга про упущенные возможности, которые забирает у тебя жизнь в один момент, и вся твоя дальнейшая дорога круто поворачивает в совершенно иную сторону.

Все начинается со смерти местного рыбака и подозреваемого в этом жителя острова из числа японцев, чьи родители когда-то иммигрировали в США. Эти события дадут толчок долгим и тяжелым воспоминаниям разных персонажей о войне с Японией, ксенофобии, детской наивной влюбленности, тяжелом труде на клубничных полях, соседях. И каждый раз как будто что-то идет не так, лишая людей их дома, работы и любимых.

В комментариях на Я.Книгах куча жалоб о том, что книга затянута, а я дослушала и хотела бы, что она была вдвое больше. Это не про крутые события, а про жизни, счастье и трагедии.

Из интересного — слово «снег» в разных его вариантах встречается в книге ровно 100 раз.

This is one of my all time favorite novels read sometime back in the 90s before my Goodreads.com days. The following short review is from the PageADay Book Lover's Calendar for today:

This was one of the first popular novels to explore the lasting effects of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. When the novel opens, it’s 1954 and memories of World War II are strong in an island community off the coast of Washington State. When a Puget Sound fisherman is found drowned, another fisherman, who is Japanese American, is accused of the crime. This compelling story combines courtroom drama with memories of a particularly shameful chapter in American history.
n  SNOW FALLING ON CEDARSn, by David Guterson (Vintage, 1995)

Beautifully written and wonderfully atmospheric. The snow storm portrayed throughout the trial had me snuggled in my chair for three days with a blanket covering me. The island and the weather were characters in the story right along with the human characters. I could almost smell the cedar trees in the woods and the strawberries in the sunny fields. And the dust blowing in the wind and in through the cracks and knot holes in the boards in the shacks at the internment camp in the California desert was just as palpable and uncomfortable. It is still hard to believe thàt the US government felt the need to relocate all of those Japanese descendants to those camps.

This book started promising, as I love atmospheric settings and beautiful writing. I got thrown off a bit when the story barely progressed due to flashbacks of each new characters entire life. It started to come together more about halfway through when it really starts to give you the context needed to understand all the racial and romantic tensions behind the trial, and I appreciated the narrative construction. However, you have to read through a good dose of racist characters, or narration where the male gaze is strong. The majority of the characters are unlikable and the ones with promise (the women) pretty much only exist for the pleasure of the male characters, or are just mother figures. The coroner comparing the size of the corpse’s reproductive parts to his own while performing the autopsy? The lawyer dwelling on his impotence while about to question the wife of the victim? The main character frequently noting how things are pressed up against Hatsue’s breasts? No thanks!

I found it a little hard to get into this book. It took a while before I cared about the characters, but once that happened it was a fantastic read. He has an excellent way with words, and the story was edge of seat riveting at one point.
I used to live in Island County and Skagit County, so that added dimension to the book (which, by the way, I've been wanting to read since it was published.)
Soemtimes, especially in the beginning, I had trouble placing characters.
If you are interested in subjects of prejudice, World War II, PTSD or a good story, you will really enjoy this book. Timely.