On San Piedro, an island of rugged, spectacular beauty in the Puget Sound, a Japanese-American fisherman stands trial, charged with cold-blooded murder. It is 1954 and the shadow of World War II, with its brutality abroad and the internment of Japanese-Americans at home, hangs over the courtroom. Ishmael Chambers, who lost an arm in the war and now runs the island newspaper, is among the journalists
covering the trial that brings him close, once again, to Hatsue Miyamoto, the wife of the accused and Ishmael's never-forgotten first love. As a heavy snowfall impedes the course of the trial, the whole community Is faced with the ambiguities of justice, the racism that persists even between neighbours, and the necessity of individual moral action, despite the indifference of nature and circumstance.