David Guterson – författare

In 1954 a fisherman is found dead in the nets of his boat, and a local Japanese-American man is charged with his murder. In the course of his trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than one man's guilt. For on San Piedro, memories grow as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries - memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and a Japanese girl; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbours watched.

A triumphant return by the author of Snow Falling on Cedars, as an attempted suicide becomes a life-enhancing diversion.Following the death of his wife Rachel and diagnosis of his own medical condition, Dr Ben Givens left his home in Seattle – heading east with his Winchester and hunting dogs in tow – not intending to return. It was to be a journey to the verges of the Columbia River, where he had entered the world and had decided he would now take his leave of it. What transpired was anything but the journey he anticipated.Instead, Ben’s perspective shifts as his intended exit transforms into an eye-opening, life-enhancing diversion, as David Guterson’s celebrated and involving prose unravels the mysteries and reveals the power of the human spirit even as it ebbs, in this moving and action-filled drama set against an unforgettable landscape.

When a Japanese-American is charged with the murder of a local fisherman, more than one man’s guilt is at stake. Soon to be a major film starring Ethan Hawke, directed by Scott Hicks (Shine).San Piedro Island in Puget Sound is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. 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 ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than one man’s guilt. For on San Piedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries – memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and a Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo’s wife; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbours watched.

From the author of the best-selling Snow Falling on Cedars, a dazzling new novel about youth and idealism, adulthood and its compromises, and two powerfully different visions of what it means to live a good life.John William Barry has inherited the pedigree—and wealth—of two of Seattle’s elite families; Neil Countryman is blue-collar Irish. Nevertheless, when the two boys meet in 1972 at age sixteen, they’re brought together by what they have in common: a fierce intensity and a love of the outdoors that takes them, together and often, into Washington’s remote backcountry, where they must rely on their wits—and each other—to survive.Soon after graduating from college, Neil sets out on a path that will lead him toward a life as a devoted schoolteacher and family man. But John William makes a radically different choice, dropping out of college and moving deep into the woods, convinced that it is the only way to live without hypocrisy. When John William enlists Neil to help him disappear completely, Neil finds himself drawn into a web of secrets and often agonizing responsibility, deceit, and tragedy—one that will finally break open with a wholly unexpected, life-altering revelation.Riveting, deeply humane, The Other is David Guterson’s most brilliant and provocative novel to date.From the Trade Paperback edition.

A sweeping, propulsive, darkly humorous new novel by the best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars: a story of destiny, desire, and destruction that reimagines Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex for our own era.   In Seattle in 1962, Walter Cousins, a mild-mannered actuary—“a guy who weighs risk for a living”—takes a risk of his own, and makes the biggest error of his life. He sleeps with Diane Burroughs, the sexy, not-quite-legal British au pair who’s taking care of his children for the summer. Diane gets pregnant and leaves their baby on a doorstep, but not before turning the tables on Walter and setting in motion a tragedy of epic proportions. Their orphaned child, adopted by an adoring family and named Edward Aaron King, grows up to become a billionaire Internet tycoon and an international celebrity—the “King of Search”—who unknowingly, but inexorably, hurtles through life toward a fate he may have no power to shape.   An instant classic—David Guterson’s most daring and dazzling novel yet—that brings a contemporary urgency to one of the greatest stories of all time. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

Like his novel, Snow Falling On Cedars, for which he received the PEN/Faulkner Award, Guterson''s beautifully observed and emotionally piercing short stories are set largely in the Pacific Northwest. In these vast landscapes, hunting, fishing, and sports are the givens of men''s lives. With prose that stings like the scent of gunpowder, this is a collection of power.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Ten sharply observed, funny, and wise new stories from the best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars: stunning explorations of the mysteries of love and our complex desire for connection. Ranging from youth to old age, the voices that inhabit Problems with People offer tender, unexpected, and always tightly focused accounts of our quest to understand each other, individually, and as part of a political and historical moment. These stories are shot through with tragedy—the long-ago loss of a young boyfriend, a son’s death at sea; poignant reflections upon cultural and personal circumstances—whether it is being Jewish, overweight and single, or a tourist in a history-haunted land; and paradigmatic questions about our sense of reality and belonging. Spanning diverse geographies—all across America, and in countries as distant as Nepal and South Africa—these stories showcase David Guterson’s signature gifts for characterization, psychological nuance, emotional and moral suspense, and evocations of small-town life and the natural world. They celebrate the ordinary yet brightening surprises that lurk within the dramas of our daily lives, as well as the return of a contemporary American master to the form that launched his astonishing literary career. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

By the author of "Snow Falling On Cedars", this collection of short stories are mainly narrated by older men, recounting the wrong turns and lost opportunities that have occurred in their lives. They remember their mistakes, their lies and their first loves with intense and lingering recollections.

From the author of THE COUNTRY AHEAD OF US and SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS, a tale about Dr Ben Givens, who, after becoming ill, leaves his home in Seattle, never intending to return. Ben embarks on a journey past snow-covered mountains to a place of canyons, sagelands and orchards where he intends to commit suicide, but it doesn't all go to plan.

Ann Holmes seems an unlikely candidate for revelation. A sixteen-year-old runaway, she is an itinerant mushroom picker who lives in a tent. Her past has been hardscrabble. Then one November afternoon, in the foggy woods of North Fork, Washington, the Virgin comes to her, clear as day. Is this delusion, a product of her occasional drug use, or a true calling to God? Gradually word spreads, and thousands converge upon the already troubled town. For Tom Cross, an embittered logger who's been out of work since his son was paralyzed in a terrible accident, the possibility that Ann's visions are real offers a last chance for him and his son. As Father Collins searches both his own soul and Ann's; as Carolyn struggles with her less than admirable intentions; as Tom alternates between despair and hope; Our Lady Of The Forest combines suspense, grit and humour in a story of faith at a contemporary crossroad.

Seattle, 1972: Neil Countryman and John William Barry, two teenage boys from very different backgrounds, are at the start of an 800m race. Their lives collide for the first time, and so begins an extraordinary friendship. As they grow older Neil follows the conventional route of the American dream, but the eccentric, fiercely intelligent John William makes radically different choices, dropping out of college and moving deep into the woods. Convinced it is the only way to live without hypocrisy, John William enlists Neil to help him disappear completely, drawing his oldest friend into a web of secrets and agonising responsibility, deceit and tragedy - one that will finally break open with an unexpected, life-altering revelation.

From the best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars: a poignant, searching memoir about one man''s fall into depression in the wake of a national tragedy, and his brave struggle to return to normalcy.      Like most of the country and the world, David Guterson woke up on Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, not thinking history was about to change. He was in Washington, D.C., with a group of fellow writers, evaluating grant applications for the National Endowment of the Arts. But before their work day had even begun, the Pentagon was bombed; the Twin Towers were down in New York City; and havoc was wreaked irrevocably on our collective sense of happiness, security, and national pride. Scrambling to get out of the city and back home any way he could, David, along with two fellow writers, rented a car and drove 2,600 miles across the country to Seattle.  But the attacks triggered something inside him, a pervasive feeling of hopelessness, fear, despair--a clinical depression that that would not go away. He lost interest in his work, family, friends--his life. Inspired by William Styron''s masterful Darkness Visible, Guterson''s Descent is the searing account of one man''s envelopment by the darkest of human emotions, and his tunneling out. Powerful, intense, and deeply felt, it is at once personal and universally illuminating--a confession from a great literary mind who takes us on a journey of what it feels like, and means, to lose one''s grasp on the world--and to find it once more, even if by fumbling in the dark.

Radically open-minded, formidably strong, and unusually clear-eyed about herself and others, Evelyn Bednarz has always been a misfit. She’s easily bored, unsuited to life at school, asks odd questions about faith and time, and sees through conventions others take for granted. Seeking to be true to herself, she hitchhikes across the American West taking odd jobs.In distant Tibet, another life unfolds as remote from Evelyn’s as can be: the life of a boy named Tsering, raised as a Buddhist monk in the mountains of Tibet, who eventually becomes a high lama.And yet, their lives are strangely linked—as Evelyn discovers when a trio of Buddhist lamas show up at her door to announce that her five-year-old son Cliff is the seventh reincarnation of the illustrious Norbu Rinpoche, recently deceased. The lamas’ visit sets off a family crisis and a media firestorm over Cliff’s future.Written in a spare, precise style of extraordinary beauty, full of surprising humor and luminosity, Evelyn in Transit delivers much-needed insight and compassion about humanity’s strivings for transcendence, and what it might mean to “live the right way.”

From David Guterson—bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars—comes this emotionally charged, provocative novel about what happens when a fifteen-year-old girl becomes an instrument of divine grace.Ann Holmes is a fragile, pill-popping teenaged runaway who receives a visitation from the Virgin Mary one morning while picking mushrooms in the woods of North Fork, Washington. In the ensuing days the miracle recurs, and the declining logging town becomes the site of a pilgrimage of the faithful and desperate. As these people flock to Ann—and as Ann herself is drawn more deeply into what is either holiness or madness—Our Lady of the Forest—seamlessly splices the miraculous and the mundane.From the Trade Paperback edition.

He saw the soft cedars of San Piedro Island, its high, rolling hills, the low mist that lay in long streamers against its beaches, the whitecaps riffling its shoreline. The moon had risen already behind the island – a quarter moon, pale and indefinite, as ethereal and translucent as the wisps of cloud that travelled the skies.A fisherman is found dead in the net of his boat off the coast of a North American island. When a local Japanese-American man is charged with his murder, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than one man''s guilt. For on San Piedro, memories grow as thickly as cedar trees – memories of a charmed romance between a white boy and a Japanese girl. Above all, the island is haunted by what happened to its Japanese residents during the Second World War, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbours watched.

From the bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars, a dazzling, darkly funny, compulsively readable retelling of Sophocles's Oedipus Rex that takes us from the 1962 Seattle World's Fair to the twenty-first century headquarters of an Internet search giant.'Superbly organised and sophisticated ... Excellently entertaining' Sunday Times'A great story and a riveting read' Daily MailIn 1962, when Walter Cousins sleeps with his British au pair, Diane Burroughs, he can have no sense of the magnitude of his error: this brief affair sets in motion a tragedy of epic proportions, upending Sophocles's immortal tale of fate, free will, and forbidden desire.At the centre is Ed King, an infant given up for adoption who becomes one of the world's most powerful men. But beneath the gripping story of Ed's seemingly inexorable rise to fame and fortune is a dark and unsettling destiny, one that approaches with ever-increasing suspense as the novel reaches its shattering conclusion.

From the bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars, a dazzling, darkly funny, compulsively readable retelling of Sophocles''s Oedipus Rex that takes us from the 1962 Seattle World''s Fair to the twenty-first century headquarters of an Internet search giant.''Superbly organised and sophisticated ... Excellently entertaining'' Sunday Times''A great story and a riveting read'' Daily MailIn 1962, when Walter Cousins sleeps with his British au pair, Diane Burroughs, he can have no sense of the magnitude of his error: this brief affair sets in motion a tragedy of epic proportions, upending Sophocles''s immortal tale of fate, free will, and forbidden desire.At the centre is Ed King, an infant given up for adoption who becomes one of the world''s most powerful men. But beneath the gripping story of Ed''s seemingly inexorable rise to fame and fortune is a dark and unsettling destiny, one that approaches with ever-increasing suspense as the novel reaches its shattering conclusion.

A powerful story of the choices we must make in a flawed world, by the bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars''Remarkable ... a highly significant contribution to American literature'' Giles Foden''Guterson''s books keep getting better ... A moving portrait of male friendship'' New York Times''Powerfully wrought ... Guterson writes beautiful, persuasive prose, harking back to Hemingway'' TelegraphSeattle, 1972: Neil Countryman and John William Barry, two teenage boys from very different backgrounds, are at the start of an 800m race. Their lives collide for the first time, and so begins an extraordinary friendship. As they grow older Neil follows the conventional route of the American dream, but the eccentric, fiercely intelligent John William makes radically different choices, dropping out of college and moving deep into the woods. Convinced it is the only way to live without hypocrisy, John William enlists Neil to help him disappear completely, drawing his oldest friend into a web of secrets and agonising responsibility, deceit and tragedy - one that will finally break open with an unexpected, life-altering revelation.