There are some hard feelings about what went down among the residents of San Piedro during the war, particularly on the part of the Japanese American population. To give us the backstory necessary to understand all the dynamics at play in the trial, the novel uses a lot of flashbacks to delve into the characters' pasts, with a particular focus on the time leading up to and during World War II. Set in 1954, on the fictional Pacific Northwest island of San Piedro, the book revolves around the trial of local fisherman Kabuo Miyamoto, who has been accused of murdering his old buddy Carl Heine. It won the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, which means people in the know (i.e., other authors) think it's a pretty important read. This 1994 David Guterson novel combines mystery, romance, history, and… quite a bit of nasty weather (seriously-a snowstorm gets several pages of air time).
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