With the help of a demented Alaska Native elder, Chukchi police chief Nathan Active hunts for the killer who left a woman's expertly dismembered body in the ice cellar of an abandoned Inupiat Eskimo fish camp. The investigation pulls Active into a dark tangle of love and jealousy, even as he struggles to recover from the PTSD that has haunted him since being wounded in a shootout in an earlier case.
The case starts when Tommie Leokuk's husband brings her to Active's office to show him what she found in her latest midnight ramble around the Arctic hamlet of Chukchi. From the pouch of her traditional atiqluk, she pulls a human jawbone with a single molar still in place.
Tommie's dementia means she can't explain where she found it. As her husband explains, "She lost her brain few years ago."
At first, Chief Active doesn't know whether she's found a murder victim or an old grave opened by erosion or scavengers.
He soon discovers it's very much a murder case, one of the most tangled he's seen. The victim had two lovers, one male, one female. Both become suspects as the investigation proceeds.
At the same time, Active grapples with PTSD from being shot in a prior case. When he starts to wonder how his gun would taste, he realizes it's time to see Chukchi's tribal healer, Nelda Qivits, who believes anything can be cured by a cup of bitter sourdock tea in her little cabin on a back street of Chukchi.
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Ghost Light is the seventh installment in the critically acclaimed Nathan Active series
"delivers a complex investigation and plenty of twists...Jones and Watts have emphasized the investigative side of this story rather than the action, appealing to their readers' intellects. They toss plenty of red herrings at Active, and thus at readers, and keep things going nicely to the conclusion."--David James, Anchorage Daily News
"Good-old fashioned armchair sleuthing in a hostile, fascinating environment that's brought to life by a master. If you're a reader, this is one of life's pleasures. If you're new to the series and want to give it a try, start at the beginning (White Sky Black Ice) so you won't miss all-important character development." -- Amazon reviewer
"When you are reading a book and you have to pause and you continue to think about the story and the characters plus you are anxious to return to reading, you know the authors got something. Jones and Watts got something. Hopefully another one is in the works. Thank you Stan and Patricia." -- Amazon reviewer
"This book was so intriguing I literally could not put it down. I read it in two days and was sorry at the end that I hadn't gone slower so I would've been able to enjoy it longer. I have read all the Nathan Active series, and this is one of my favorites. The action goes from the north slope oil fields to the village of Chukchi and down into Anchorage, giving insights into life on the pipeline as well as the village and the cosmopolitan city of Anchorage" -- Amazon reviewer
Praise for previous volumes in the series::
"Painterly descriptions of Alaska's natural beauty and the lives of the native people are fascinating." - USA Today
"An enchanting series" - People
"You can feel the bite of the west wind that comes screaming across the Alaska tundra and sense the isolation of the Inupiat Eskimos who live in this desolate part of the world." - New York Times Review of Books
