‘Snow Falling on Cedars’ Seattle author David Guterson talks monks and parenting in latest, ‘Evelyn in Transit’

As a child growing up in north Seattle, “Snow Falling on Cedars” author David Guterson was keeping score on a chalkboard for his brother’s junior high basketball game. When another child, Ani Sakya, disagreed with the score, Guterson made an insult about the kid’s mom. Sakya threw Guterson on the ground, and Guterson’s arm broke in the fall.

From this, the two became friends, and in the letter to the reader that opens his newest book, “Evelyn in Transit,” Guterson wrote, “After a while I understood that he, his four brothers, his parents, and his aunts, uncles and cousins were Tibetan, and that his family was prominent, and that his great-uncle, who wore robes, was purportedly a reincarnate in a line of high lamas. All of that, I have no doubt, led to ‘Evelyn in Transit.’ ”

On Feb. 5, Guterson will be in conversation with “So Far Gone” author Jess Walter about “Evelyn in Transit,” his seventh novel which tells the story of Evelyn, a single mom who must make the decision whether to send her son to Nepal to live as a Buddhist monk. Though the book is fictional, real people in Guterson’s life were inspirations for characters.

“Dezhung Rinpoche, I had no idea who he was or what he was, just my friend’s great uncle,” Guterson said. “He was in robes. He didn’t learn English. He just kind of smiled at you when you walked by. Super nice guy. But then I found out that he was one of the foremost scholars out of Tibet to come to the United States. And he was widely sought after for his interpretation and analysis of impenetrable Tibetan texts.”

When Guterson attended college at University of Washington, he took classes about Buddhism, Tibetan history and Tibetan language.

“It wasn’t like I became a Buddhist, but there were a lot of ideas and concepts and themes that I could relate to, and there were a lot of questions that were being asked that were like questions that I had,” Guterson said. “So I’ve kind of had this lifelong relationship to Buddhism.”

This was also when he took his first creative writing classes, and fell in love with writing. After he finished his undergrad, he decided to pursue a master’s degree in creative writing at University of Washington, as well as receive a teaching certificate. From there, Bainbridge High School hired him to teach English in 1983. All the while, he kept writing, but it wasn’t until 1994, when he published “Snow Falling on Cedars,” that he left his position to write full-time.

Guterson said he felt lucky to have had a good experience with his book being turned into a movie, which came out in 1999.

“(Scott Hicks, the director) was interested in hearing from me, developing the screenplay; I just had a good experience that way,” Guterson said. “I think it might have been because my attitude toward it was that the author should get out of the way.”

Guterson and his wife raised their five children on Bainbridge Island, and “Evelyn in Transit” dives into themes of parenting and family as much as Buddhism.

“Parenting is just this profound and ongoing inquiry like, what’s the right thing to do, what’s the right path, to what extent should I be the arbiter of this person’s existence?” Guterson said. “Do I just sort of shepherd and nurture this person until they realize themselves, and become what they are destined to be, given how they’re put together from birth, or do I promote or push or try to influence them in some strong way, to go in some particular direction?”