David Guterson Books in Order

These stories follow men and boys facing loss, desire, aging, and family trouble against Pacific Northwest landscapes. Across different voices and situations, the collection finds pressure and sorrow in ordinary encounters with nature and other people.

Drawing on his experience as a teacher and parent, Guterson considers homeschooling as one possible form of education. He explores its history, practical demands, legal questions, and the role families can play in shaping a child's learning.

On a Washington island in 1954, Japanese American fisherman Kabuo Miyamoto stands trial for the death of Carl Heine. Reporter Ishmael Chambers investigates as old love, wartime trauma, and anti-Japanese prejudice complicate the search for justice.

In this brief, painful story, a family and the captain of a fishing boat face the aftermath of a boy's drowning. Guterson stays close to grief, helplessness, and the small actions that follow sudden loss.

After learning he has terminal cancer, retired heart surgeon Ben Givens leaves home with his dogs for one final hunting trip. Encounters and memories across central Washington challenge his plan to control the end of his life.

Teenage runaway Ann Holmes says the Virgin Mary has appeared to her in the woods near a struggling Washington logging town. As pilgrims arrive, the novel follows faith, doubt, need, and opportunism without settling the mystery too neatly.

Neil Countryman and John William Barry meet as adventurous Seattle teenagers, then grow into very different men. As Neil settles into ordinary domestic life, John withdraws into the wilderness, leaving their long friendship shadowed by duty and regret.

A contemporary Pacific Northwest retelling of the Oedipus myth follows Ed King, a technology entrepreneur shaped by an obscured past. Ambition, privilege, and family secrets gather around him as his drive for power turns increasingly dangerous.

In this candid memoir, Guterson recounts the depression that followed September 11, 2001, after he witnessed the attack on the Pentagon from Washington, D.C. It traces his frightening loss of balance and his slow return to daily life.

Ten stories examine missed connections and the ways people misread one another across lines of class, gender, faith, and family. The characters often get things wrong, but the collection keeps looking for humor, compassion, and a way across the distance.

Guterson's first poetry collection gathers close observations of woodlands, animals, walking, memory, and everyday places. Written with an eye on the natural world, the poems make room for loneliness, wonder, love, and the passing of time.

This book-length walking poem follows trails, forests, rivers, and mountain country in the Pacific Northwest. Using the mountaineering idea of a safe turn-around time, it links outdoor travel with age, attention, and personal change.

An aging defense lawyer takes on the murder case of a fundamentalist mother accused after her adopted Ethiopian daughter dies. His novelist son follows the trial while confronting questions of justice, family, grief, and the stories people tell themselves.

Evelyn is told that her young son may be the reincarnation of a Tibetan Buddhist lama, and that he could be sent to a distant monastery. The decision becomes a searching story about parenthood, purpose, belief, and time.