Snow Falling on Cedars, David Guterson's mystery-suspense novel, provides an immaculate interpretation of a small American coastal island's trial to conquer and expel the ongoing dogmatic narrow-mindedness synonymous with its inhabitants. A novel of love and destruction, Snow Falling on Cedars is satiated with underlying plots and morally exigent themes. {Guterson's novel interweaves realistic interpretations with romantic accents to fuse these subplots, together with a role-playing setting, into one watertight mystery romance.} .
The small community associated with San Piedro Island, recently stricken with the misfortune of a mysterious drowning, soon realizes a more complex situation. Murder shortly becomes a possibility, and the unforgotten love affair between a white man and the wife of the accused Kabuo Miyamo seems to rise once again to the surface of an already nervous ocean of underlying conflict contiguous to the American and Japanese-American races. This conflict, though not visible to tourist mindsets, has been subliminally effervescent since the mistreatment of the Japanese Americans during World War II, and its dormancy beneath the everyday smiling faces of Japanese and American bystanders is awakened heightening tension in the small island community. This recently catalyzed restlessness in the community draws an amount of dauntingly familiar reminiscence upon the history of the Island, and contemplates once again the idea of racial superiority and prejudice, be it American or Japanese-American.
Snow Falling On Cedars is crawling with decidedly vivid setting descriptions, sometimes with hidden meanings, which contribute to the intelligence of the novel. .
"It was precisely the sort of home Carl would build, he thought - blunt, tidy, gruffly respectable, and offering no affront to the world, though at the same time inviting nobody. It sat back fifty yards from the road on three acres of alfalfa, strawberries, raspberries, and orderly vegetable gardens- (Guterson, 69).