The Man in the High Castle: Philip Dick

This was a sci-fi book dealing with the alternate outcome of WWII where Germany and Japan win and divide the US between themselves. The Germans control the east coast, the Japanese control the west coast and there is a "neutral buffer zone" in the Rocky Mountains. The main characters are; Julianna, who lives in Canon City Colorado in the neutral zone as a Judo teacher, her husband Frank who moved to San Francisco and starts making jewelry. (he thought, as a Jew, he could hide in the Japanese controlled zone because they weren't exterminating like Germany.) The other main character is Baynes, a Swedish industrialist who pokes fun of the German sector. Julianna becomes obsessed with the book "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" written by a man in the buffer zone of Cheyenne about if the US had won the war and what life would be like (still different than today's world)The book is banned in the German sector. Julianna meets an Italian truck driver who convinces her to go see the author with him, on the way she realizes he is an undercover German sent to kill the author, she kills him and then meets up with the author to tell him he is in trouble. The author reveals that the book was written over time by using the I CHING, which is a Chinese Divination text. The reader is left to decide if the book was written by chance, or if a book wrote a book about what was actually the truth that the US did win the war. Baynes is identified as a German deserter and is sent back to Germany to what he believes will be his death. Frank was arrested for being Jewish, but then is released when his old boss Childan buys a piece of his jewelry and tries finding meaning in it. I felt this could have been a really good book, but it fell a bit short. It was still interesting and one is left wondering if they are supposed to find any meaning in the book. It is as ambiguous as "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy".