SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS by David...

SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS by David Guterson (Vintage: $12.; 460 pp.). Guterson received the 1995 Pen-Faulkner award for this subtle novel, which combines elements of a murder mystery with an examination of racism in a small Washington town during the 1950s. The peace of sleepy San Piedro Island is disrupted when commercial fisherman Carl Heine drowns and the evidence suggests he was murdered by another fisherman, the taciturn Kabuo Miyamoto. Guterson reveals the dark legacy of racial animosity in the island community: Caucasians blame Japanese Americans for World War II; Nisei remember that their neighbors watched calmly as they were herded off to internment camps.