In the following interview-essay, Guterson discusses influences, inspirations, and sense of place in his works.

David Guterson peers out at Miami's lapis Biscayne Bay as though straining to see something else—an island off Washington's dark Puget Sound, his home and the place of his haunting novel, Snow Falling on Cedars. "I'm not an urban person," he confesses in a crowded outdoor restaurant. "And I've been in cities endlessly for the past five or six weeks on this book tour. Cities produce in me melancholy or a tension I don't need."

Guterson, 39, received the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award for Snow Falling on Cedars. "It is such an incredible honor," he says, but what coaxes forth his first smile is the thought of returning home to his wife and four children. "What sustains me is to be with my family and to write."

Amid laughing people in tropical colors...