A novelbook by David Guterson focusing on a small island's prejudice after World War II. A fisherman, Carl Heine, is found dead in his nets and a local Japanese man is accused of murder. Guterson pulls in moments of love, pain, tenderness, hate, happiness, death, and suspense.
As a boy, Ishmael Chambers falls love with Hatsue Imada, a Japanese American girl. After being sent to the confinement camps, Hatsue realizes that she doesn't love him and pushes him away. Guterson follows the progression of their life until it comes together once more when Kabou Miyamoto, Hatsue's husband, is accused of murder.
The war memories are quite graphic and leave me wondering how anyone made it home from the war alive. The island lives with the constant memory of war each day, then men who returned home have changed. Wives are left to tend to their husbands emotional wounds as best they can. And just 10 years later, it appears that they haven't healed enough when Kabou is on trial.
The courtroom scenes were well written, following what I'd believe to be an actual progression of a murder trial. However, I found some major flaws in the execution and the rushed ending of the trial. Overall, the story was written in a way that kept me reading. However, once the story was told, I was left frustrated and feeling slighted as the story was cut short, ends dangling everywhere, and feeling that the author had given up or wasn't able to fully develop the major topics/issues/conflicts that he introduced.
written on June 19, 2004