Inheriting a homestead from her late uncle, a stunned Kate Shugak receives a cryptic letter from him imploring her to discover his father's fate, a mystery involving a priceless tribal artifact for which Kate is targeted by murderous attacks.

In Alaska, people disappear every day. In Aleut detective Kate Shugak's Park, they've been disappearing a lot lately. Not only are Park rats disappearing at an alarming rate, but so is life in the Park as Kate knows it. Alaska state trooper Jim Chopin's workload has increased to where he doesn't make it home three nights out of four, the controversial mine has seduced Johnny and his classmates with summer jobs and divided the Ninilta Native Association,...

"'... though there is no fixed line between wrong and right, There are roughly zones whose laws must be obeyed.' ... It is New Year's Eve, nearly six weeks into an off-and-on blizzard that has locked Alaska down, effectively cutting it off from the outside world. But now there are reports of a plane down in the Quilak mountains. With the National Transportation Safety Board unable to reach the crash site, ex-Trooper Jim Chopin is pulled out of retirement...

Between two suspicious murders and a series of attacks on snow mobilers up the Kanuyaq River, part-time P.I. and newly elected chairman of the Niniltna Native Association Kate Shugak has her hands full.

On the first day of spring a young mans fancy turns to thoughts of massacre when he takes a .30-06 and kills nine of his neighbors in the Park. Or did he kill only eight? And if so, who killed the ninth victim, and why? It?s up to Kate to find out.

What seems a tragic accident soon becomes a murder investigation as Kate is drawn into a case of political intrigue. A mid-air collision in the Alaskan wilderness between two small aircraft leaves ten people dead. Was it a bird strike, pilot error... or premeditated murder? Then an eleventh body is found in the wreckage: a man shot gangland style, twice in the chest and once in the head. In an investigation that reaches to the highest levels of government,...

Kate Shugak, a former detective with the Anchorage District Attorney's office, is called out of her self-imposed isolation when she is recruited to find out what happened to a young national park ranger who disappeared during the Alaskan winter along with an investigator sent in to check on him.