Senator Kip Davies is dead, shot execution-style by a man news reports describe as a member of "an ultra-right-wing militia" from Maine. The hunt for the killer is nationwide, and yet the assassin has found refuge where he might least expect it. Wounded and weak, Robert Drummond is being cared for in the home of another senator currently in Washington.

The senator's daughter and his wife become Drummond's protectors - if not his hostages - while he grows stronger during the next several heart-pulsing weeks.

As they become intimately involved with Drummond, these women learn firsthand the philosophy and psychology of the militia movement that has become such a terrifying puzzlement in America. And when their desperate drama ends - in a fashion at once unpredictable and inevitable - it brings with it a measure of understanding of how this country functions and dysfunctions.

Snow Man is not simply a book about the FBI or terrorism or politics; it is above all a story about how left and right, rich and poor, men and women can all find a shared tenderness.