Snow Falling on Cedars
By David Guterson
About the Book….
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 neighbors
watched. Gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric, Snow Falling on Cedars is
a masterpiece of suspense-- one that leaves us shaken and changed.
About the Author…
David Guterson is the author of Snow Falling on Cedars
and East of the Mountains, and of the story collection The
Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind. A Guggenheim
Fellow and PEN/Faulkner Award winner, he lives in
Washington State.
Discussion Questions…
1. Snow Falling on Cedars opens in the middle of Kabuo Miyamoto's trial. It
will be pages before we learn the crime of which he has been accused or the
nature of the evidence against him. What effect does the author create by
withholding this information and introducing it in the form of flashbacks?
Where else in the narrative are critical revelations postponed? How is this
novel's past related to its fictional present?
2. When the trial begins, San Piedro is in the midst of a snowstorm, which
continues throughout its course. What role does snow play--both literally and
