Monday, February 16, 2009

2009 Support your Local Library Challenge Book Review #1: Snow Falling on Cedars

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

This book truly moved me into another time and place: a small island, San Piedro in Puget Sound in 1954. The story centers around the trial of Kabuo Miyamoto for the murder of a fellow islander fisherman but this is really mainly a device to explore the personalities and interconnected lives of the islanders-it is not your usual mystery book.

You get to know the islanders relationships in the past, including the friendships that were broken apart by the forced movement of the Japanese-American islanders inland during WWII and the current state of relationships, about salmon fishing and fishermen and even strawberry farmers!

This book won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award in 1995.

I really enjoyed this book: it is a thoughtful book and I will continue to think about the ideas raised here.

This is my first book review for the 2009 Support your Local Library Challenge .

2 comments:

Marjorie (Molly) Smith said...

Hi thanks for telling a little about this book. That is exactly the kind of stories I love to read. I will have to look for it at the Libray on my next trip to town.

Barbara Bamberger said...

Hi Miri: I read Snow Falling on Cedars about 5 years ago. I also really enjoyed it - I was introduced to a community I would never have known much about otherwise.