Guterson uses the first three chapters to provide the necessary exposition for the legal thriller, the interracial love story, the exploration of racism, and the social commentary. The three-day trial proceeds in a straightforward fashion, but the rest of the narrative is a combination of flashback and memories. Events are told through different points of view, with testimony seamlessly becoming memory, with people and words triggering other memories and feelings. When Ishmael Chambers is introduced, it's not readily apparent that he's the main character of Snow Falling on Cedars.
The narrative opens in a courtroom; Kabuo Miyamoto, an American of Japanese descent, is on trial for killing Carl Heine, Jr. The trial takes place on the small island of San Piedro, north of the Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest. Alvin Hooks is prosecuting, and Nels Gudmundsson is defending Kabuo. Moments before the trial starts, the owner, editor, and reporter for the local newspaper, Ishmael Chambers, shares a stilted conversation — and obviously a past — with Kabuo's wife, Hatsue: "'Go away,' she'd said in a whisper, and then for a moment she'd glared. He remained uncertain afterward what her eyes had meant — punishment, sorrow, pain."
