I really enjoyed the language and imagery the author created in this book. The title in itself sets the tone. I saw this years before the film and really felt the author conveyed what it was like living in the Pacific Northwest during the Second World War. I think the storyline is timeless. Forbidden love, societal rules...war. Recommended to those interested in period pieces with settings not often written about.

I loved the writing and the subject.

FIRST REVIEW FROM 2009:
Very depressing, somewhat predictable so far. However, it's great for anyone discovering "better" fiction. It will definitely appeal to teenagers in the high school setting.

REVISITED REVIEW: SEPTEMBER 3, 2013

I revisited “Snow Falling on Cedars” by David Guterson because I am planning on teaching this book to my upcoming 10th graders this school year. At first when I read it for pleasure reading a few years back, I found the novel to be quite trite and predictable, with a maudlin love story at the center of a story that concerned itself with racial prejudice, the Manzanar internment camps, and Japanese honor.

However, this time, I found myself less cynical, and more open to the possibilities of a good love story, set among the bleak backdrop of World War 2 and Washington’s Puget Sound. Kabuo Miyamoto is a Japanese American fisherman who wishes to reclaim land that his father had paid for from the Heine family, ironically, German-American immigrants who had themselves been persecuted for their Nazi sympathies. Mr. Miyamoto finds himself accused of murdering Carl Heine Jr., and this murder-mystery sets up stories of flashbacks- of passion, of longing between Miyamoto’s wife, Hatsue and her forbidden romance with journalist Ishmael Chambers, a white boy who has loved her from afar.

Gorgeous images of snow literally falling, strawberry fields, grey skies and water pervade this haunting love story, of honor, of cultures going and coming; of assimilation, and of a history that many of us don’t wish to face- the Japanese internment camps are a part of our history that should be seen with shame, yet acknowledged and learned from.

A boy falls in love with a Japanese neighbor girl. Along comes WWII, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. The Island, In Washington State, where these two young people live, is torn by racial tensions, the Japanese are sent to internment camps, the young men go to war.
Years pass and the young woman has returned to the Island, married a Japanese man and become a mother. The young man has been to war, lost part of an arm and come back home. He is still in love with the Japanese woman. Ten years have passed when an Island man dies on the sea while fishing and the Japanese woman's husband is accused of murder. When our man, still in love, is given a chance to save his rival from the accusation of murder, what will he do? When the Island people are given a chance to judge a Japanese man on trial will they be able to think past their prejudice?
Slow moving, but strong in atmosphere.

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.

Snow Falling On Cedars by David Guterson is atmospheric, haunting and heartbreaking.

This is a beautiful story of love caught between culture, and racism concerning Japanese immigrants in the US after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Life and literature is often a dialogue about missed connections, struggle and bad timing.

Told in various flashbacks and court case defense, you can't help but wonder if someone else in this story should be on trial...

This is a deeply moving, small-town drama that I read every few years. It's a reminder to me and anyone else that if you don't know history, you are bound to repeat it.

It's also a powerful reminder that before we are taught, and before we grow up, our heart always knows the way home.

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.

Prevod na srpski škripi, muca i zapinje. Možda je i knjiga malo dosadna, možda joj nisam dala pravu šansu, ali posle 100 strana ne mogu više. Ostavljam.

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.

Ein Amerikaner japanischer Abstammung ist angeklagt, einen Amerikaner deutscher Abstammung ermordet zu haben und das auf einer kleinen Insel an der Nordwestküste der USA, zehn Jahre nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg. Die Geschichte handelt von einem Indizienprozess voller Ressentiments, der gegen den Angeklagten geführt wird, von einer Liebesbeziehung und Freundschaften, die durch die Rassengrenzen und den Krieg sabotiert werden, von Diskriminierung komischerweise nur von japanischen Ex-Feinden und von den Entwicklungen, Aussagen und überraschenden Wendungen im Strafprozess.

Fast wie bei Perry Mason wird das Verbrechen durch viele Zeugen beleuchtet und alle Hintergründe aufgedeckt. Alle handelnden Charaktäre werden liebevoll aber fast schon zu exzessiv inklusive Hintergrund beleuchtet. Am Anfang ist es etwas mühsam die im Stakkato auf den Leser einprasselnden Kurz-Lebensgeschichten zu sortieren und im Gedächtnis zu behalten, weswegen ich einen Punkt abziehe. Es ist nicht immer notwendig die Personen inkl. deren Krankheiten, Schwächen und früherer Arbeitgeber mit wiederum ausführlicher Lebensgeschichte so ausladend breitzutreten. Da die Handlung aber auf einer kleinen Insel spielt, hat man nach ca. 150 Seiten wirklich alle kennengelernt und kann anschliessend die spannende Handlung und die ausführlichen Beschreibungen von Landschaft, Menschen, und Motiven geniessen.

Fazit: Wenn man über den Anfang hinwegkommmt, ist es eine sehr bewegende, lehrreiche und spannende Geschichte sprachlich sehr ansprechend und atmosphärisch dicht erzählt.

This novel is a gem, a pleasure to read, and goes somewhat unnoticed in the realm of modern literature. It has striking similarities to "To Kill a Mockingbird". It's themes of prejudice, forbidden love, and greed are played out on a sleepy Puget Sound island in 1954. A white fisherman dies while out fishing one morning, and a Japanese American is accused of his murder. The prejudice surrounding Japanese Americans is strong in the aftermath of World War II, in spite of the fact most of them were native born American citizens. There is a trial and there are flashbacks to World War II right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when these same Japanese American citizens were placed in internment camps. So well written, an absolute necessity for a dialogue driven novel.

Great story with superb writing!