David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

"To deny that there was this dark side of life would be like pretending that the cold of winter was somehow only a temporary illusion, a way station on the way to the higher "reality"of long, warm, pleasant summers. But summer, it turned out, was no more real than the snow that melted in wintertime."

"If disaster, so be it, they said to themselves. There was nothing to be done except what could be done. The rest -- like the salt water around them, which swallowed the snow without effort, remaining what it was implacably -- was out of their hands, beyond."