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.

Genre: Mystery