Synopsis
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.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1999-11-01 | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Height: | 9.5 in | | Width: | 6.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 23.2 oz |
Publisher's Note
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.
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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