In Edgar-winner Stabenow's excellent 16th Kate Shugak novel (after 2007's A Deeper Sleep
), feisty, independent Kate faces challenges on various fronts, starting at home with her 16-year-old foster son, Johnny Morgan, and her Alaska state trooper boyfriend, Jim Chopin. In a national park known as “the Park,” whose “backbone, its moral center, its royalty” are “the four aunties” (all widows), a Canadian mining firm, Global Harvest Resources Inc., is planning a massive operation that will affect every park resident. Meanwhile, a lot of folks are taking the law into their own hands; a series of brutal snow machine robberies raises the stakes. No one writes more vividly about the hardships and rewards of living in the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness and the hardy but frequently flawed characters who choose to call it home. This is a richly rewarding regional series that continues to grow in power as it grows in length. Author tour. (Feb.)
