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David Guterson
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Country Aheadby Ben Guterson, David GutersonISBN 0517195267 (0-517-19526-7)
Hardcover, Random House Value Publishing
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The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behindby David GutersonISBN 0679767185 (0-679-76718-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind'More editions of The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind:
- The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind: ISBN 0060160977 (0-06-016097-7)
Hardcover, Harpercollins - The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind: ISBN 074514909X (0-7451-4909-X)
Hardcover, Chivers Press - The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind: ISBN 0679767185 (0-679-76718-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
- The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind: ISBN 0060160977 (0-06-016097-7)
East of the Mountainsby David GutersonISBN 0151002290 (0-15-100229-0)
Hardcover, Harcourt
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› Find signed collectible books: 'East of the Mountains'Book summary:David Guterson's first novel, Snow Falling on Cedars, was a true ensemble piece, in which even a high-stakes murder trial seemed like a judgment passed on the community at large. In his eloquent second novel, however, the author swings dramatically in the opposite direction. East of the Mountains is the tale of a solitary, 73-year-old Seattle widower. A retired heart surgeon, Ben Givens is an old hand at turning isolation to his advantage, both professionally and personally: "When everything human was erased from existence except that narrow antiseptic window through which another's heart could be manipulated--few were as adroit as Dr. Givens."
Now, however, Ben has been dealt a problem entirely beyond his powers of manipulation: a diagnosis of terminal cancer. With just a few months to live, he sets out across the Cascades for a hunting trip, planning to take his own life once he reaches the high desert. A car crash en route puts an initial crimp in this suicide mission. But the ailing surgeon presses onward--and begins a simultaneous journey into the past. Between present-tense episodes, which demonstrate Ben's cranky commitment to his own extinction, we learn about his boyhood in Washington's apple country, his traumatic war experience in the Italian Alps, and the beginning of his vocation.
Guterson narrates the apple-scented idyll of Ben's childhood in a typically low-key manner--and orchards, of course, are seldom the stuff of melodrama. Still, many of his ambling sentences offer miniature lessons in patience and perception: "They rode back all day to the Columbia, traversed it on the Colockum Ferry, and at dusk came into their orchard tired, on empty stomachs, their hats tipped back, to walk the horses between the rows of trees in a silent kind of processional, and Aidan ran his hands over limbs as he passed them with his horse behind him, the limbs trembling in the wake of his passing, and on, then, to the barn." The wartime episodes, however, are less satisfactory. Clearly Guterson has done his research down to the last stray bullet, but there's a second-hand feeling to the material, which seems less a token of Ben's detachment than the author's.
There is, alas, an additional problem. Begin a story with a planned suicide, and there are exactly two possible outcomes. It would be unfair to reveal Ben's fate. But as the forces of life and death yank him one way, then another, Guterson tends to stack the deck--particularly during a bus ride toward the end of the novel, when Ben's fellow passengers appear to have wandered in from a Frank Capra film. Yet East of the Mountains remains a beautifully imagined work, in which the landscape reflects both Ben's desperation and his intermittent delight. And Guterson knows from the start what his protagonist learns in painful increments: that "a neat, uncomplicated end" doesn't exist on either side of the mountains. --James Marcus [via]
More editions of East of the Mountains:
- East of the Mountains: ISBN 0156011042 (0-15-601104-2)
Softcover, Harcourt - East of the Mounains: ISBN 0606176411 (0-606-17641-1)
Hardcover, Demco Media - East of the Mountains: ISBN 0613232070 (0-613-23207-0)
Hardcover, Bt Bound - East of the Mountains: ISBN 0151002290 (0-15-100229-0)
Hardcover, Harcourt
- East of the Mountains: ISBN 0156011042 (0-15-601104-2)
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Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Senseby David GutersonISBN 0156300001 (0-15-630000-1)
Softcover, Harvest Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense'Book summary:The chilly, wet air of Bainbridge Island, Washington, practically gusts out of this book, written with such descriptive flair that it effortlessly whisks readers into the life of David Guterson, a homeschooler who despises the word and who fell into the practice by accident after he and his wife suffered anxiety attacks over sending their oldest son to school. Guterson is best known for Snow Falling on Cedars, the fictional bestseller he wrote three years after this honest examination of the ultimate in school alternatives. Before he became a prizewinning author, Guterson was a high school English teacher. It is this contradiction--schooling his own children at home, while teaching his neighbors' children in school--that Guterson tries to dissect and defend. He does so with the same fresh, poetic prose that distinguishes his fiction. Some of the characters may sound vaguely familiar. In one chapter, Guterson is forced to defend homeschooling when he moonlights with a gillnetter who believes the practice threatens democracy. Guterson's detailed account of that night--the fisherman's cadence of speech and body language, the misty isolation of the Pacific after dark--seems like a practice run for Snow Falling on Cedars. Still other chapters get downright erudite, with references to contemporary education books by such authors as Tracy Kidder, E.D. Hirsch Jr., and Jonathan Kozol, as well as citations of important research in the field. Guterson weaves these theories and facts into his own life to support his contention that all parents should have a wealth of choices when it comes to educating their children, and that school districts should foster and assist in these choices.
As for Guterson's three sons, their days are described as rich, active, and simply fun, with trips to theaters, a sheep farm, a medieval fair, art galleries, science centers, and other hands-on experiences that ignite their passion for learning. Guterson claims he's not stumping for homeschooling and, true to his word, he devotes a chapter to his lawyer father's stance on the issue (he opposes keeping his grandsons out of school, but defends the rights of parents to do so). Still, the author makes a well-reasoned case for accepting parents as their children's chief educators. Even if you don't agree, you will enjoy getting to know Guterson and his clear-headed, lyrical look at life. --Jodi Mailander Farrell [via]
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The Otherby David GutersonISBN 0739327860 (0-7393-2786-0)
Softcover, Random House Large Print
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Our Lady of the Forestby David GutersonISBN 0375726578 (0-375-72657-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Our Lady of the Forest'Book summary:David Guterson's Our Lady of the Forest navigates between the mystical and the cynical in its slowly paced telling of a Marian encounter in North Fork, Washington. The story opens in the North Fork campground among homeless mushroom pickers. The town is reeling from the loss of its logging industry, and its residents make their way by scavenging odd jobs and selling the produce of the forest. Living in the campground, 16-year-old Anne Holmes is a runaway asthmatic whose recent interest in Catholicism follows a period of petty thievery, drug use, and frequent masturbation (an interest that Guterson notes is shared by the town priest, Father Don Collins). While off on her rounds of mushrooming one morning, she encounters a bright light--the Virgin Mary, she believes. Soon, she has drawn a band of thousands as people flock to North Fork to witness the vision and be healed. But, through Carolyn Greer, a world-weary fellow-mushroom-picker who longs for nothing more than an extended vacation to "Cabo"-- readers learn that Anne actually sees nothing, or at least no one else shares the Marian apparition that gives Anne lofty commands each day.
At times Guterson lets his characters' pettiness, opportunism, and cynicism overrun the delicacy of Anne's world. Carolyn's vehement atheism and materialistic languor undermine what could have been a stronger counter-point to her spiritual friend. Even Father Collins, who struggles between fatherly compassion and sexual longing for the young visionary, is too full of self-loathing for readers to embrace him. Yet, the novel's exploration of Anne's abrupt and intense faith pierces the narrative and brings light to it. And as Anne's visions grow in intensity and her health begins to fail, one can't help but long for divine intervention on her behalf. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]
More editions of Our Lady of the Forest:
Snow Falling on Cedarsby David GutersonISBN 0582278457 (0-582-27845-7)
Softcover, Addison-Wesley Longman, Incorporated
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Snow Falling on Cedars'Book summary:Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award San Piedro Island, north of 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 a man's guilt. For on San Pedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries--memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and the 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 neighbors watched. Gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric, Snow Falling on Cedars is a masterpiece of suspense-- one that leaves us shaken and changed. "Haunting.... A whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at the same time a mystery, something altogether richer and deeper."--Los Angeles Times "Compelling...heartstopping. Finely wrought, flawlessly written."--The New York Times Book Review [via]
More editions of Snow Falling on Cedars:
- Snow Falling on Cedars: ISBN 067976402X (0-679-76402-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc - Snow Falling on Cedars: ISBN 0151001006 (0-15-100100-6)
Hardcover, Harcourt - Snow Falling on Cedars: ISBN 0151004439 (0-15-100443-9)
Hardcover, Harcourt - Snow Falling on Cedars: ISBN 0613014367 (0-613-01436-7)
Hardcover, Bt Bound - Snow Falling on Cedars: ISBN 0676576109 (0-676-57610-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc - Snow Falling on Cedars: ISBN 0745137415 (0-7451-3741-5)
Softcover, Paragon House Publishers - Snow Falling on Cedars: ISBN 0606121404 (0-606-12140-4)
Hardcover, Demco Media - Snow Falling on Cedars: ISBN 0582278457 (0-582-27845-7)
Softcover, Addison-Wesley Longman, Incorporated
- Snow Falling on Cedars: ISBN 067976402X (0-679-76402-X)
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Snow Falling on Cedarsby David GutersonISBN 058241928X (0-582-41928-X)
Softcover, Prentice Hall
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Snow Falling on Cedars'Book summary:Fighting the distrust and prejudice of his neighbors on a remote island in Puget Sound, a Japanese-American man who spent time in an internment camp during World War II, finds himself on trial for murder. The histories of the accused and the victim, both fishermen and residents of the small town of San Piedro, unfold as newspaperman Ishmael Chambers embarks on a quest for the truth. Lonely and war-scarred, Chambers strives for justice and inner strength, while coming to terms with his ill-fated love for Hatsue Miyamoto, the wife of the accused. Evocative and beautifully written, Snow Falling on Cedars won the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award. [via]
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