©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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Ekaterina comes to her granddaughter's homestead and convinces Kate to accompany her to the annual AFN convention in Anchorage. The grandmother's concern over the board's ability to protect the Iqaluk coastal rain forest has been heightened by one board member's death. After Kate and Ekaterina arrive in Anchorage, another board member, Kate's cousin, dies under suspicious circumstances, and Ekaterina is the remaining vote against logging in Iqaluk.
Stabenow incorporates some hot Alaska topics into her story -- particularly national forestry and parks' policies and subsistence issues, as well as Alaska backroom politics. Some players in the plot are drawn from real-life Alaska models, while others are creations of Stabenow's imagination. Money and power form the base motives of the bad guys, and Stabenow contrasts these against Shugak's belief in the land as provider and humankind as its protector.
The secondary plot involves Shugak's former colleague and longtime love interest, Jack Morgan, and his son Johnny. Jack is battling his ex-wife for custody of Johnny. While trying to give Johnny a sense of belonging to Alaska, Shugak becomes a storyteller. She uses traditional "knife story" techniques to draw Johnny's family's Alaska chronology in the sand. Later in the novel, Kate's newly discovered storytelling abilities surprise her, her grandmother, and all the Native convention.
You can count on Stabenow to put you in the Alaska setting and to deliver a believable plot and strong main characters -- all of the ingredients necessary for a successful mystery novel.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.