Snow Falling on Cedars (Abridged‪)‬

When a Japanese-American is charged with the murder of a local fisherman, more than one man’s guilt is at stake. Soon to be a major film starring Ethan Hawke, directed by Scott Hicks (Shine).

San Piedro Island in 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 one man’s guilt. For on San Piedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries – memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and a 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.

Reviews

“Gripping, tragic and densely atmospheric. Snow Falling on Cedars makes compelling listening and is brilliantly narrated by Tim Pigott-Smith.”
Norfolk Journal November 1996

“Compelling… heart-stopping. Finely wrought, flawlessly written.”
New York Times

“Luminous… a beautifully assured and full-bodied novel [that] becomes a tender examination of fairness and forgiveness… Guterson has fashioned something haunting and true.”
Time Magazine

About the author

David Guterson is the author of the novels Snow Falling on Cedars and East of the Mountains, as well as short stories and non-fiction. Snow Falling on Cedars won the PEN/ Faulkner Award in 1995. David Guterson lives in Washington State.