When newly appointed Village Peace Officer Norma Faunce, saddled with a pathologically jealous husband, embarks on a search for a missing hunting guide in Southeast Alaska's unforgiving wilderness, she unwittingly courts disaster in her zeal to succeed, at last opening old wounds long hidden in fading memories of her fatherless childhood. Norma's whirlwind marriage to Gunnery Sergeant Roscoe Faunce in 1979 was too exciting for her to let his anti-social tendencies stand in the way. Herself a Marine, Norma was accustomed to having good times with dangerous men. Now into six years by Roscoe's side as he floats to the top of a migratory Fish and Wildlife Service career, she chafes at her stay-at-home existence in yet another remote Alaska village. She rebels, taking on the job of Yakutuk's sole peace officer. As she grows more and more confident, eventually certain that murder was involved in Ward Hubble's disappearance, she runs from Roscoe's mania to possess her into the arms of a man who not only tops her list of suspects, he mysteriously refuses to invoke the alibi that could clear his name. Behind this dilemma lurks a trap that Norma cannot foresee. She can only try to hide the affair from Roscoe long enough to decide whether the discovery of a dead man is worth the loss of a love that might, at last, be real. "Delivered in a clean, descriptively rich narrative voice, this excellent book is a carefully managed blend of mystery and a serious psychological portrait of a feisty, practical woman vulnerable to her own desires and struggling to manage her life. A great read from cover to cover." Ian T. Macmillan Author of Village of a Million Spirits Winner of the P.E.N. USA-West Award for Fiction.