Snow Falling on Cedars

Read by B.D. Wong
Three CDs, 3 Hours
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM UNIVERSAL PICTURES
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award

American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award

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.

David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award, among others.  He is a contributing editor at Harper's magazine and lives on an island in Puget Sound.