Snow Falling on Cedars (1994)

A fishing death becomes a murder trial on the fictional Washington island of San Piedro, where land, livelihood and wartime dispossession shape whose account receives a hearing. Guterson makes the sea's working routines and the island's personal histories part of the evidence. The snowstorm intensifies an already enclosed social world. A reflective, emotionally involved choice rather than a quick procedural, especially rewarding if you want to examine how a community's geography can preserve prejudice.