I can see why some people would dislike it. It did get slow in parts. I had a difficult time getting through the internment camp section, but I loved the story and the writing. I've read it twice. It suited me. ( )

I thought I was about to dive into a cozy romance. Nope! It opened up in court where a Japanese, Kabuo Miyamoto, was on trial for the murder of another islander, a gill-netter, Carl Heine. Crap! I can’t stand law and order and courtroom novels. BUT, this one’s different. I ended up loving it. The story is actually told in-between witnesses, and boy was it told. The author had done incredible research to tell this story. Every aspect of it was so real and true, from the lives of the islanders, young love, the experience of the Japanese concentration camps, to the racism against the Japanese in the 1950’s, which was still strong after the bombing of Pearl Harbor just ten years earlier. He did great in setting the scene for Washington and making you feel like you were there.

There was no reading through pages and pages of court proceedings. Although, I felt he could have left out the “retelling” of the whole murder incident by the journalist on the last several pages that seemed to go on and on.

The story is set in 1954, September 15 and 16th to be exact, on fictitious San Piedro Island in Washington. (This island is said to actually be based on the real Bainbridge Island.)

In 1940’s, Kabuo’s father had made arrangements with Carl’s father, Carl Sr., to purchase 7 acres of land for growing strawberries at a time when it was unlawful for Japanese, or any foreigners, to even own land in the U.S. Carl’s mother, Etta, was as racist as they came and never wanted Carl Sr. to sell any of their land to the Japanese, but the agreement was made and was to be completed by the time Kabuo was to become a citizen of the U.S.

The Miyamoto’s couldn’t make the last two payments because of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the war with Japan. All the Japanese around the U.S. were being rounded up and sent to concentration camps. This included the Miyamoto’s and all the other Japanese on the island. Unfortunately, during this time, Carl Sr. died of a heart-attack and Etta sold the strawberry land out from underneath the Miyamoto’s.

It’s now 1954, and Etta's son, Carl Jr., is found dead. He was found drowned and all tangled up in his gill net with a big gash and cracked skull behind his left ear. They believed it was murder, and they believed Kabuo, Carl’s long-time friend, who had his land stolen out from under him by this family, was the culprit. The evidence seemed to be piling up against him, and so was the prejudice.

Ishmael Chambers, a journalist, is very interested in this case because he and Kabuo’s wife, Hatsue, had a young-love, secret affair while in high school. Ishmael was sent off to war to fight the Japanese and Hatsue was sent off to a concentration camp with her family. Their love would never be. It was absolutely forbidden, but Ishmael was trapped inside his own head after coming back from the war with only one arm and having lost Hatsue. He never married and never had children. Hatsue had moved on. She married and now had three children by Kabuo and living life back on the island.

At the end of the trial, Ishmael had gone to the U.S. Coast Guard station and researched what exactly the weather and ships in the channel were doing the night of Carl’s death. He found evidence that there was a ship that had been re-routed through the Shipping Channel and would definitely have caused a wake that ended up knocking Carl off the boat and killing him, but was holding back that information until he realized what a loser he was, in life in general, and how bad he must have appeared to Hatsue. He ended up doing the right thing because it was the descent thing to do as a human-being, but also to prove to himself (and maybe even to Hatsue) that he was worth more than just printing school and town functions and advertisements in his father’s newspaper, which he had taken over after his father’s death. This evidence caused the judge to declare a mistrial and the case was thrown out of court, giving Kabuo back his life.
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MOVIE: "Snow Falling on Cedars" (1999), starring Ethan Hawke as Ishmael Chambers (Journalist) and others I don't really know. ( )

Haunting work inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird.
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A novel that grabbed my sensibilities through more than one reading. ( )

Maybe 3.5. I quite like the exploration of how environment influences personality; and more importantly a good telling of overt and unexamined racism and war hysteria as it affected japanese americans in the 40s and 50s. Yes, it can get overly detailed and oddly flat, but that adds to the tone for me. ( )