The Heron Catchers

2023 American Writing Awards Finalist | 2023 Foreword Indies Awards Finalist | 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist | 2024 International Rubery Book Awards Finalist

"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)

PRAISE FOR DAVID JOINER'S KANAZAWA

"Kanazawa is both a sensitive portrayal of the struggles of an international marriage and a paean to the city in which it is set."

—The Japan Times

"With its deliberate, expressive descriptions of the city and the mountains that surround it, Kanazawa is a character driven novel that illustrates the importance of communication and compromise."

—Dontaná McPherson-Joseph, Foreword Reviews

"He engages readers’ senses as a way of introducing his beautiful surroundings, describing sedate machiya homes, carafes of hot sake, aromas of temple incense, the prick of a snail shell on a lip. By keeping his sentences and structure simple, Joiner allows his decidedly Western prose to reflect a sense of Asian place without making Asia seem 'exotic.'

—Lit Hub

"Reflective and atmospheric, Kanazawa is a story for sitting with. The drama and conflict are experienced not as grand explosions of intense emotion but as a quiet gnawing from within that is far less easy to escape. Joiner’s patient attention to the interiority of his characters and a strong sense of place create a moving portrayal of the messiness of relationships and the ways that all the things we hope to bury in the past stay with us."

—Reid Bartholomew, World Literature Today

"Filled with lush greenery, formidable mountains, historic castles, and a vibrant local community... Kanazawa casts a shimmering layer of magical novelty around the countryside that has too long been reserved for prominent cities ever since Japan’s industrialization in the early 20th century."

—Ella Kelleher, Asia Media International

"A graceful novel of a graceful city. David Joiner’s Kanazawa interweaves four love affairs, echoing the fantastical writings of the early 20th century writer Izumi Kyoka. At the story’s heart lies the enigmatic bond between Emmitt’s wife’s parents, with a secret only revealed in the novel’s dramatic climax. The other three love affairs, with their own enigmas, are Emmitt’s own - for his wife Mirai, for his adoptive city of Kanazawa, and for his muse Kyoka."

—Alex Kerr, author of Lost Japan and Finding the Heart Sutra

"An intriguing story of a Japanese family worthy of the best of Japanese literature.”

—Roger Pulvers, author of Liv

"Kanazawa drips with a sense of place, the setting much more than just a back drop to the action; Joiner shows that there are plenty of stories taking place outside the vortex of Tokyo. Tense, moving, and subtly gripping, Kanazawa is a welcome addition to the books-about-Japan shelf."

—Iain Maloney, author of The Only Gaijin in the Village

"The novel is poignant, elegant and meditative, with a cathartic climax, a dramatic payoff after a steady buildup. This is achieved fantastically, without a single dull moment. The straightforward language, the rich atmosphere, the natural flow of the characters’ thoughts, words, and movements all drive the story forward organically. Joiner has achieved an incredible feat in making a story whose lifeforce is art seem so effortless and devoid of artifice."

—My Murmuring Bones