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White Sky, Black Ice (Nathan Active Series #1)

Name: White Sky, Black Ice (Nathan Active Series #1)
Author: Stan Jones
ISBN: 9781569473337

by Stan Jones

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Overview

In the small Alaskan village of Chukchi, what are the odds of two suicides occurring in a matter of a few days? State trooper Nathan Active discovers that his suspicions concerning the deaths are well-founded; the two men were murdered. But what was the motive and who killed them?

Synopsis

An Alaskan State trooper must satisfy both Eskimo and "white man's" justice.

Trooper Nathan Active, child of a fifteen-year-old unmarried Inupiat Eskimo girl, was given up for adoption and raised in Anchorage, where he graduated from the university. Now that he has been posted to his remote birth village, Chukchi, he longs to return to civilization. Before that happens, he is confronted with atypical suicides. Eskimos are notoriously at risk for self-slaughter, but never has one man after another shot himself in the Adam's apple. Can a shaman's curse really be at work?

Lucy Generous is a beautiful villager who is enlivening Nathan's tour of duty. Nathan's mother tells him to beware; she wants him to find a girl who went to college and has a good job. But with Lucy's help, the nalauqmiiyaak (almost white) state trooper begins to understand his Eskimo heritage, which provides him with the solution to the crimes that he is confronted with.

This is the first in a series of Nathan Active mysteries.

New York Times Book Review

The crimes...[are] nowhere near as interesting as the cycles of life in this fierce climate...

About the Author, Stan Jones

Stan Jones is a native of Alaska, where he has worked as an award-winning journalist and bush pilot. He is the author of three previous mysteries in the acclaimed Nathan Active series.

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Editorials

New York Times Book Review

The crimes...[are] nowhere near as interesting as the cycles of life in this fierce climate...

Library Journal

Fans of authentic Alaskan mysteries will love this new series featuring state trooper Nathan Active. A full-blooded Inupiat adopted by a white family and raised in Anchorage, he has been assigned to the remote village of Chukchi, where his formidable birth mother and a small host of other memorable characters are coping with a string of youthful suicides. People blame a family curse for the latest--though Active has his doubts--and the next falls totally outside the pattern. Details of speech, everyday life, and cultural beliefs permeate the narrative, while Active's position as a native raised by whites provides frequent humor. First-rate. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

NY Times Book Review

The crimes...[are] nowhere near as interesting as the cycles of life in this fierce climate...

Kirkus Reviews

North of everything, where even Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak and Sue Henry's Alex Jensen fear to tread, Alaska State Trooper Nathan Active plies a slow but steady trade in law enforcement in his hated native village of Chukchi. Lately, a pair of suicides has made life more interesting for Nathan. Not many people shoot themselves in the throat with rifles, but both Gray Wolf miner George Clinton and mechanic Aaron Stone did—George in continuing fulfillment of a family curse that's already carried off his two older brothers as suicides—unless Nathan wants to believe a mean old drunk who informs him cryptically that George was really killed by "that qauqlik" ("the chief"), and the growing evidence that Gray Wolf, which has poured money into Chukchi and sharply cut domestic violence complaints in the village, may not be the smiling Big Brother it appears. Working his way through a bleak, lovingly rendered northern landscape, his own divided feelings about police dispatcher Lucy Generous, and a cast polarized by race, class, and their positions on hunting and liquor and the law, Nathan finally puts the pieces together, though not in time to prevent a third suicide. There's never much mystery about what's behind Chukchi's troubles, but first-timer Jones takes aim at his familiar targets with zest and brings them down in a rousing finale, though one that seems as long as an Alaskan winter.