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 man's 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 neighbours watched. Gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric, Snow Falling on Cedars is a masterpiece of suspense-one that leaves us shaken and changed.
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[The accused man, Kabuo Miyamoto, sat proudly upright, as if trying to distance himself from his own trial]***
(@vintagebooks, 26 September 1995, first published 12 September 1994, paperback, 460 pages, Around the Year in 52 Books 2019, a book related to something cold, bought from @TheBHF)
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This is very different than I was expecting. This book is many things, historical fiction, police procedural, courtroom drama and a dash of love story. This is dense, intense novel that completely absorbed me. The main chunks of the book are set in 1954 during the trial of a Japanese-American fisherman for the murder of a fellow fisherman, an American. Guterson gives fascinating insight into the characters especially the dead man, Carl Heine and his accused murderer, Kabuo Miyamoto. There are also flashbacks of events ten years before during WWII when the Japanese residents of San Piedro were exiled by American soldiers and none of their neighbours lifted a hand to help them. The trial exposes the fact that the people of San Piedro have never fully healed and anger, hatred and bitterness simmers just below the surface.
