Snow Falling on Cedars, my first novel, was published in 1994, and has since sold more copies and been published in more languages and versions than I can readily track.  The film, released in 1999, starred Ethan Hawke and Max von Sydow.

Snow Falling on Cedars is a courtroom drama, a war novel, a love story, and a novel of place all rolled into one.   Legitimate provender for the television show Jeopardy!, it also, on occasion, fills out a crossword puzzle, or lends itself to public wordplay.  It has a modest life in cartoon drawings, in community theaters, as a photo caption, as fodder for high school video projects, and most wonderfully of all, among prominently banned books.

I'm sometimes asked how I feel about this novel, which is far and away the one I'm best known for.  My answer: the way you might feel toward a house you used to live in.  At this very moment I sense it out there, agitating 16 year-olds with papers due tomorrow on young love, war, prejudice, or justice.  Which reminds me that I had them in mind when Snow Falling on Cedars was just notes in a teacher’s desk drawer.  I wrote it for them, but it has found a rich life among a much broader audience.