Snow Falling on Cedars

Snow Falling on Cedars is a 1994 novel by David Guterson. Guterson, a teacher, wrote the book in the early morning hours over ten years then quit his job to write full-time. Plot Set on the fictional San Piedro Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, just north of Puget Sound, in the state of Washington in 1954, the plot revolves around a murder case in which Kabuo Miyamoto, a Japanese American, is accused of killing Carl Heine, a respected fisherman in the close-knit community. Much of the story is told in flashbacks explaining the interaction of the various characters over the prior decades. Carl's body had been pulled from the sea, trapped in his own net, on September 16, 1954. His water-damaged watch had stopped at 1:47. The trial, held in December 1954 during a snowstorm that grips the entire island, occurs in the midst of deep anti-Japanese sentiments following World War II. Covering the case is the editor of the town's one-man newspaper, the San Piedro Review, Ishmael Chambers, a World War II US Marine Corps veteran who lost an arm fighting the Japanese at the Battle of Tarawa while watching his friends die. Torn by a sense of hatred for the Japanese, Chambers struggles with his love for Kabuo's wife, Hatsue, and his conscience, wondering if Kabuo is truly innocent. Through extended flashbacks, the reader learns that Ishmael had fallen in love with Hatsue when the two attended high school together right before the war. They had been secretly dating at this time and lost their virginity to each other. Spearheading the prosecution are the town's sheriff, Art Moran, and prosecutor, Alvin Hooks. Leading the defense is the old, experienced Nels Gudmondsson. Several witnesses, including Etta Heine, Carl's mother, accuse Kabuo of murdering Carl for racial and personal reasons. Kabuo Miyamoto (a decorated war veteran of the Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team), experienced prejudice because of his ancestry, following the Imperial Japanese Navy's attack on Pearl Harbor. He accepts the murder trial as a kind of karma for his part in killing young Germans during the war. Also involved in the trial are Horace Whaley, the town coroner, and Ole Jurgensen, an elderly man who sells his strawberry field to Carl. The strawberry field is contested in the trial. The land was originally owned by Carl Heine Sr. The Miyamotos lived in a house on the Heines' land and picked strawberries for Mr. Heine. Kabuo and Carl Heine Jr. were close friends as children.