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This is the kind of book where you can smell and hear and see the fictional world the writer has created, so palpably does the atmosphere come through. Set on an island in the straits north of Puget Sound, in Washington, where everyone is either a fisherman or a berry farmer, the story is nominally about a murder trial. But since it's set in the 1950s, lingering memories of World War II, internment camps and racism helps fuel suspicion of a Japanese-American fisherman, a lifelong resident of the islands. It's a great story, but the primary pleasure of the book is Guterson's renderings of the people and the place.

This book is a slow burn. It starts with courtroom drama, then takes a detour through the past and present lives of the residents of the small, island community. It's a meandering tale that weaves the drama of a murder trial with the horrors of war and the internment of Japanese Americans, and describes every detail with lush, evocative prose. This is a book to linger over and savor the writing, not one to binge.