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Victor Solomon is found dead at his fishing camp on the ice outside of Chukchi, an antique harpoon in his chest. It is up to Alaska Trooper Nathan Active, himself an Inupiat, to find out what happened. The harpoon had come in to the village shortly before the murder as part of the return of the mummified villager called "Uncle Frosty". The current administration wants to put him in the local museum and charge the tourists to see him, but the traditionalists of the tribe want to expose the mummy on the tundra in the old ways. The mummy has disappeared also. Active, who is considered half white by the villagers because his birth mother, a 15 year old girl, gave him to the white schoolteachers of Chukchi who moved to Anchorage and brought him up there, finds he has to learn more about his heritage and the history of his people in order to solve both the murder of Victor Solomon and the meaning of the icons scratched into the ivory of the harpoon and the amulet that had been found in Victor's mouth. The story stretches back in time to the days of the Shamans before Christianity "saved" the native peoples of Alaska. Jones has written a tale of interior Alaska in the winter that deals gently with the humor, beliefs and customs of the Inupiat, their conflicts with the white society into which they have been thrust, and the practices that have allowed them to live in a hostile environments for centuries. This is a better book than the first in the series WHITE SKY, BLACK ICE, which was also very well worth reading.
Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, April 2003
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