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As a law student, I originally picked up David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars because a friend of mine told me it was about a murder trial. I bought it expecting John Grisham, but what I got was a captivating novel which offered more insight into the human condition than the American justice system.

The setting of the story is an island of fishermen of the coast of the state of Washington just after the end of the Second World War. A man has been accused of murder. The motive is a multi-generation dispute over land. What complicates matters is the fact that the accused is of Japanese descent at a time when the battles in the Pacific and the detention of Japanese Americans in this country are fresh in people's memories.

At the center of the novel is Ishmael Chambers, a local newspaperman who lost an arm fighting the Japanese during the war, and who suffers the pains of his doomed love for Hatsue, the wife of the accused. As the story unfolds, the reader is taught through flashbacks about the relationship between Ishmael, Hatsue, the victim, the accused, and the rest of the residents of the island. While the book deals with some very serious issues like prejudice, justice, pride, and revenge, Guterson never loses sight of the individual characters who are at the heart of the story.

The plot is a captivating "whodunit," but what is most interesting about the book is the characters. From Ishmael, a man who suffers from the scars of war and love, to the beautiful and proud Hatsue, the reader is presented with a spectrum of complex and realistic characters, some heroic, some villainous, but most somewhere in between. An award-winning and best-selling book, Snow Falling on Cedars is well written and worth reading. It should appeal to a wide variety of readers, and I recommend it to everyone.

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(Submitted 2/9/00 by Notre Dame law student Julio.)