Newenham: an ice-bound fishing town with a six-bed jail and a saloon that does double-duty as a courtroom. It's a wide-enough patch to warrant a state police presence, though, and Alaskan State Trooper Liam Campbell is it.
Campbell is hardly here by choice. He's been banished to the last police outpost in America, his career deep frozen after a fatal mistake occurred on his watch. Three months in and living on a leaky gill-netter moored in Bristol Bay, Campbell is brooding on how to put down roots on dry land again and rekindle his relationship with bush pilot Wyanet Chouinard — who won his heart long ago, and then broke it — when a fishing boat is found adrift, burned down to the waterline. Aboard, Liam discovers seven charred bodies: a family of local fishers and their crew. A terrible accident? Or a cover-up of something worse?
And then a young archaeological assistant is gruesomely murdered at a remote dig site. With eight dead, even for Newenham, things are getting out of hand — and Liam is left following a trail of false leads, false confessions, and false hopes.
