As a Japanese-American fisherman stands trial for murder on an island in Puget Sound, snow blankets the countryside. The whiteness covers the courthouse, but it cannot conceal the memories at work inside: the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, an unrequited love, and the ghosts of racism that still haunt the islanders. First novels rarely attract as much attention as Snow Falling on Cedars. Remaining on bestseller lists for months, it has cast a spell on readers across the country.
The best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars returns to his Pacific Northwest settings-and moves beyond them-in ten sharply observed, funny, and wise new stories that explore the mysteries of love, and unravel our complex desires to connect with others.
Ranging from teenage to middle-age, the voices that inhabit Problems with People offer humorous or searing but always tightly focused accounts of the universal quest to understand one another-individually, and as part of our political and historical moment. Their stories are sometimes shot through with tragedy-the long-ago loss of a young boyfriend, a son's death at sea-while in others, the mere circumstances of our cultures and selves-whether it is being Jewish; overweight and single; a tourist in a history-haunted land; or on the brink of a diminished old age-prompt questions about our sense of reality and belonging. Spanning diverse geographies-across America and in distant countries including Nepal, South Africa, and Germany-these stories showcase Guterson's signature gifts for characterization, psychological nuance, emotional suspense, and evocation of the natural world. They celebrate the small, unexpectedly brightening surprises that lurk within the dramas of our daily lives.
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.
A triumphant return by the author of Snow Falling on Cedars, as an attempted suicide becomes a life-enhancing diversion.Following the death of his wife Rachel and diagnosis of his own medical condition, Dr Ben Givens left his home in Seattle - heading east with his Winchester and hunting dogs in tow - not intending to return. It was to be a journey to the verges of the Columbia River, where he had entered the world and had decided he would now take his leave of it. What transpired was anything but the journey he anticipated.Instead, Ben's perspective shifts as his intended exit transforms into an eye-opening, life-enhancing diversion, as David Guterson's celebrated and involving prose unravels the mysteries and reveals the power of the human spirit even as it ebbs, in this moving and action-filled drama set against an unforgettable landscape.
From the author of the best-selling Snow Falling on Cedars, a dazzling new novel about youth and idealism, adulthood and its compromises, and two powerfully different visions of what it means to live a good life.
John William Barry has inherited the pedigree and wealth of two of Seattle's elite families; Neil Countryman is blue-collar Irish. Nevertheless, when the two boys meet in 1972 at age sixteen, they're brought together by what they have in common: a fierce intensity and a love of the outdoors that takes them together into Washington's remote backcountry, where they must rely on their wits and each other to survive.
Soon after graduating from college, Neil sets out on a path that will lead him toward a life as a devoted schoolteacher and family man. But John William makes a radically different choice, dropping out of college and moving deep into the woods, convinced that it is the only way to live without hypocrisy. When John William enlists Neil to help him dis- appear completely, Neil finds himself drawn into a web of secrets and often agonizing responsibility, deceit, and tragedy, one that will finally break open with a wholly unexpected, life-altering revelation.
From David Guterson-bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars-comes this emotionally charged, provocative novel about what happens when a fifteen-year-old girl becomes an instrument of divine grace.
Ann Holmes is a fragile, pill-popping teenaged runaway who receives a visitation from the Virgin Mary one morning while picking mushrooms in the woods of North Fork, Washington. In the ensuing days the miracle recurs, and the declining logging town becomes the site of a pilgrimage of the faithful and desperate. As these people flock to Ann-and as Ann herself is drawn more deeply into what is either holiness or madness-Our Lady of the Forest-seamlessly splices the miraculous and the mundane.
From the author of Snow Falling on Cedars comes this bestselling novel about a dying man's final journey through a landscape that has always sustained him and provided him with hope and challenges.
When he discovers that he has terminal cancer, retired heart surgeon Ben Givens refuses to simply sit back and wait. Instead he takes his two beloved dogs and goes on a last hunt, determined to end his life on his own terms. But as the people he meets and the memories over which he lingers remind him of the mystery of life's endurance, his trek into the American West becomes much more than a final journey.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
