SOURCE: "Love for a Cold Climate," in The Observer, January 1, 1995, p. 9.

[In the review below, Gerrard remarks favorably on Snow Falling on Cedars.]

Urban thrillers are out; the thrills of the far north are now capturing the imagination of readers. E Annie Proulx did it with the award-winning The Shipping News set among the lowering skies, blistering winds and foggy, stunning bleakness of Newfoundland. Peter Høeg did it, too, with his best-selling Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, so full of northern bitterness the wintry recesses of the human spirit. And this year, first-time novelist David Guterson is set to burst in from the cold.

Snow Falling on Cedars, to be published by Bloomsbury in May, is a glorious whodunnit blown through by the elements and full of a seductive sense of grief. It takes place on San Piedro Island (north of Seattle), in the Pacific northwest. It...