San Pledro island north of Puget Sound is a place so
isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make ene-
mies. 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 enguing that it becomes clear that
what is at stake is more than che man's gait For on San Pedro
memory grows as thiokly as coder trees and the fields of ripe
strawberries-~-memories of a charmed fave affair between a
white boy and the Japanese aid who grew up te become
Kabuo'8 wife: memories of land desired, pard for, and lost
Above all. San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what
happened to its Japanese residents during World War I when
an entire community was sent into exile white its neighbors
watched. Gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric, Snow
Falling on Cedars is a masterpiece of suspense -
but one that leaves us shaken and changed