Snow Falling on Cedars: Exploring Community Through Seasons
Roan Church | April 11, 2024
A small town in an impossibly impossible scene, a town where you know everyone's name but never get to know their intentions. A community with personality and pleasures, and of course, that dark underbelly that no one seems to talk about.
“Snow Falling On Cedars” is about the trial of Kabuo Miyamoto, who is an American of Japanese descent who is being charged with the murder of Carl Heine, a white salmon fisher in the local area. This story is set in the made-up town of San Piedro island, located in the Puget Sound in Washington state. The story takes place primarily in the courtroom. It explores the history of this community through the testimonies of witnesses who talk about the history of the island and the defendants' heritage and history. This novel plays with the idea of time passing physically through the seasons and emphasizes the winter season and what it means to this island. “Snow Falling on Cedars” is a fantastic and suspenseful read that provides much world-building in such a small area.
From horror to coming-of-age stories, small towns are always the perfect place to contain your characters so they do not stray too far into the outside world. This small, sanctioned area allows authors to play with a small world of their own and create a sense of “this could be me.”
“Snow Falling On Cedars” explores this idea of a small town community quite literally sanctioned off by its island bounds, however, Guterson plays with the idea of escaping and what would happen if they left those constraints.
When I first started this book it reminded me a lot of the video game Stardew Valley, which takes place in a small town. As you continue throughout the game, you build relationships with other townsfolk and learn more about the community you have joined. “Snow Falling on Cedars” feels the same, the experience of being thrown into an island you know nothing about and slowly learning more and more about these unfamiliar people around you. The reader starts to learn how these constraints are broken and see where these people have come from and how that affects the relationships around you, and the readers slowly start to piece this mystery of the murder together.
“Snow Falling On Cedars” explores not just a summertime massacre or a teenager's spring freedom but a whole lifetime and what a lifetime does to a community. It emphasizes the seasons and how they pass, what comes from these seasons and how they shape the time in which we explore.
We get to see the perspective of many characters who span across generations. We get to see Miyamoto’s family and their experience of being immigrants during World War II and how that affects these families' children. We get to see how the racism that was spread in America during this war affected communities that targeted people call home. It is not just a murder case but a look at how powerful words are and how these words can change lives.
The novel begins with a cold winter day in the courtroom with Miyamoto on trial, and you know nothing. We learn what he is on trial for, the murder of Carl, and we begin to understand why he might have done it. Did he murder him for the racism he has experienced, for the land he believed Carl stole from him or did he murder him at all? The blow to Carl's head might suggest he did, the water found in his lungs might show that he did not. The mystery of this book draws you in, but it's the sound of the waves that is reminisced upon by Miyamoto, the scent of spring rain when he first learned to love, and the snow falling on cedars that makes you feel like you belong.