Synopsis
In 1954 a fisherman from San Piedro Island in Puget Sound is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese-American is charged with his murder. The trial is haunted by memories of what happened to the Japanese residents during World War II when the entire community was sent into exile.
In the midst of a raging snowstorm, a trial on Puget Sound in the 1950s pits the island's Japanese-American inhabitants against the local fisherman: a courtroom drama plus a study of conflicts between cultures and generations.
On San Piedro, an island of rugged, spectacular beauty in Puget Sound, a Japanese-American fisherman stands trial for murder. Set in 1954 in the shadow of World War II, Snow Falling on Cedars is a beautifully crafted courtroom drama, love story, and war novel, illuminating 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.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1995-10-01 | | Series: | Vintage Contemporaries Series |
| Size | | Height: | 7.8 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 9.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
A phenomenal West Coast bestseller, winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and an Abby Award nominee, this enthralling novel is at once a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, the story of a doomed love affair, and a stirring meditation on place, prejudice, and justice. "Finely wrought, flawlessly written".--The New York Times Book Review.
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award. American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award. San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than a mans guilt. For on San Pedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries--memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and the Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo's wife; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbors watched. Gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric, Snow Falling on Cedars is a masterpiece of suspense-- one that leaves us shaken and changed."Haunting.... A whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at the same time a mystery, something altogether richer and deeper."--Los Angeles Times
"Compelling...heartstopping. Finely wrought, flawlessly written."--The New York Times Book Review
Industry Reviews
"You may be able to change the channel or turn off the television set and get the Simpson case out of your mind, but once you start 'A Civil Action' you probably will not be able to put it from you until it's finished, and it will stay with you for a long time even then. As it should."
T. H. Watkins (09/03/1995)
"Luminous...a beautifully assured and full-bodied story...Guterson has fashioned something haunting and true."
book jacket - Pico Iyer
"With this beautiful first novel, David Guterson establishes himself as one of the most mature, important and skillful young novelists today."
book jacket - Charles Johnson
"'Snow Falling on Cedars' announces the emergence of a skillful writer."
Times Literary Supplement - Stephen Henighan (05/26/1995)
"Whether in truth or fiction, I have never read a more compelling chronicle of litigation."
Advertisement - John Grisham
"...[A]side from the requisite twists of the mystery genre, there are no surprises in this novel. It demands little from the reader. Instead, it 'gives' us very much: maritime lore, the forensic lab, and a previously underplayed historical event....The big issues--racism, for example--are dealt with in the earnest but archly simplistic tones of Hollywood....Dilemmas of the soul are wrapped up in a quick flourish of good solid pioneer pragmatism."
London Review of Books - Tom Vanderbilt (10/03/1996)
"Jonathan Harr has written a simply terrific book about the practice of law in America. By following a single lawsuit on its tortuous path through Boston's Federal District Court, he has captured more of the sham and nobility and greed of this troubled profession than anything I have read in years. By turns wildly funny and unspeakably sad, A Civil Action is a brilliantly realized work of reportage."
Lukas
"The legal thriller of the decade."
Dirda
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