Friends share special books with friends, and I would like to share Snow Falling on Cedars with the Friends of the Library. This is a first novel by David Guterson who received the Discover Great New Writers Award from Barnes and Noble by a unanimous vote of the judges.
On San Piedro Island in the Puget Sound, Kabuo Miyomoto is charged with cold-blooded murder of another fisherman. It is 1954 and the memories of World War II and the internment of the Japanese Americans cloud the town. Ishmael Chambers, who lost an arm in the Pacific war is the local journalist covering the trial. His sense of justice is complicated by his boyhood love for the accused man’s wife.
The book explores the theme of race relations in a small town and the effects of the overarching events of war on the people. “Neighbors are pitted against neighbors as the resulting trial and wartime paranoia nearly destroy the fabric of diversity and tolerance that has been the chief characteristic of the small fishing town.” (George Myers, Columbus Dispatch, Sunday, March 5, 1995.)
My particular reasons for liking the book are the poetry of the writing and the mode of presentation of the people.
“San Piedro had too a brand of verdant beauty that inclined its residents toward the poetical. Enormous hills, soft green with cedars, rose and fell in every direction. The island homes were damp and moss covered and lay in solitary fields and vales of alfalfa, feed corn, and strawberries. Haphazard cedar fences lined the careless roads, which slid beneath the shadows of the trees and past the bracken meadow.” [p. 3]
The history of each character is presented as he/she is related to the defendant, Kabuo Miyomoto. Only briefly is the witness placed on the stand to give his testimony. Therefore, the reader gains a personal perspective on what the witness has to say and how he/she is related intimately to the case. The reader’s own racial feelings are strummed and must be re-examined. “Both suspenseful and beautifully crafted, Snow Falling on Cedars portrays the psychology of a community, the ambiguities of justice, individual moral action despite the indifference of nature and circumstances” [Book jacket]. Seek a quiet corner and a cup of tea and enjoy this special book.
