The Heron Catchers

"Full of pastoral beauty…with characters who feel full and human, and whose dramas, in their quiet way, will leave a lasting impression."

—Kirkus Reviews

"A couple navigates their doomed marriage while living in Yamanaka Onsen, a beautiful yet claustrophobic town where gossip is rife and private lives are public knowledge."

—Iain Maloney, The Japan Times

"A multi-sided geometry of love and pain set in rural Ishikawa."

—DC Palter, Japonica

"[The Heron Catchers] is an emotional drama about the daily lives of ordinary people, but it also manages to be at times amoral, violent, and sensual, and it keeps the reader engaged…reminiscent of the works of Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, and other great writers of the Showa period.” 

–Daiya Hashimoto, Editor for Booklogia

"An enjoyable look at life outside the major Japanese tourist haunts, and an examination of the issues faced by those who attempt to make a life for themselves there."

—Tony's Reading List

"The Heron Catchers, is at once a novel about a particular place, but is also a novel for us all, as our fates and feelings are intertwined with the natural world. Joiner's deeply felt and sensitive rendering of the inner lives of men and women in midlife, who are more affected by the place they live than they are aware, shifts in subtle waves, like the ocean that borders the town of Kanazawa where much of the novel is set. Closely observed and with care paid to emotional nuances, Joiner has written a book about adult life, and the endless striving we feel for meaningful connection."

—Marie Mutsuki Mockett, author of Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye and The Tree Doctor

"This slow burn of a novel sears itself into your consciousness with equal parts tension and poignancy. The Heron Catchers skillfully captures one blended, broken family's experience of growth and healing amidst the beauty and precariousness of Kanazawa's natural world."

—Leza Lowitz, author of In Search of the Sun: One Woman's Quest to Find Family in Japan

"Joiner reels the reader in with characteristic fine plotting, carefully crafted writing, vivid imagery and descriptions of life in the Japanese countryside, and a tone of authenticity belonging to a writer who knows and loves Japan. A riveting and worthy follow-up to Kanazawa.”

—Amy Chavez, The Widow, the Priest and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island

“David Joiner’s The Heron Catchers introduces us to the quiet green abundance of the Japanese mountains, the slow beauty of pottery, and the pain of love ended. We follow wounded characters, Sedge and Mariko, as they learn to heal after each has suffered from devastating betrayals. Like the herons they ultimately rescue from injuries incurred by natural and human calamities, they too strike out at those who seek to help them. Not unlike the wandering poet Matsuo Basho who steps into the frame of the story here and there, Joiner offers flashes of insights as sharp and beautiful as a heron taking flight. Readers will find in this elegiac, imaginative work, space for reflection and discovery.”

—Rebecca Copeland, author of The Kimono Tattoo, co-editor of Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch

"An intimate, rewarding novel of people linked by misfortune who search for redemption, wholeness, and purpose. Joiner evokes his protagonist’s inner world vividly among descriptions of the life, culture, festivities, and natural environment of a small hot-spring town near Kanazawa. The Heron Catchers is an engrossing sojourn in one of Japan’s most charming off-the-beaten-path destinations."

—Jeffrey Angles, translator of Hiromi Ito’s The Thorn Puller and author of My International Date Line (Winner of the Yomiuri Prize for Literature)