When the sun rises in the Arctic after having been gone for months, the effect is one of time blindness and disorientation. In Rebecca Wright Stevens's gripping legal thriller-memoir, Sisters of the Midnight Sun, this unwavering beauty became the staging ground for a crime as chilling as the permafrost. The bodies of two well-known sisters, Bernice and Wanda Ipalook, were discovered outside of Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow, Alaska), leading to more than a forensic puzzle for those drawn into the investigation.
The account follows Stevens's time as a tenacious defense attorney assigned to defend Amos Lane, a somewhat notorious figure in the region. Lane had assault and theft charges already pending against him, making him an easy target to accuse for the sisters' deaths. What began as a straightforward criminal case quickly spiraled into a complex web of politics and historical trauma. Stevens skillfully sets the scene, detailing the claustrophobia of a town where everyone is a witness and no one is a stranger. The writing is gripping as she describes the procedural hurdles specific to the region: having to take prop planes to inaccessible areas, the importance of oral testimony, and the gut-wrenching stakes for a community trying to get justice for people they had known their entire lives, slain and accused alike.
Perhaps the most compelling attribute of Sisters of the Midnight Sun is Stevens's transparency regarding her own relationship with the Arctic and its community. She details her connections to at-risk teens she was unable to help, as well as her romance with a charming Indigenous man who, like many in the town, had a serious drug dependency. She mourned the limitations of her role as a legal practitioner within these communities, even as her bonds with the people there deepened. The natural world is itself a character, with scenes that dramatize both the dangers of the cold and the creatures living within it, as when Stevens found herself face to face with a ravenous polar bear: "Terror seized me like I had never known before--not of death or of darkness but of being lifted into the air and hearing all my ribs snap."
Sisters of the Midnight Sun is for readers who grew up on the razor-sharp courtroom dramas of Scott Turow or the high-stakes atmospheric tension of John Grisham, delivering an extra bite that feels like a bracing breath of sub-zero air. It provides the satisfaction of a legal thriller while serving as an insightful investigation into a territory those in the Lower 48 rarely see clearly. This is a haunting, expertly crafted reminder that the law is only as strong as the people who uphold it. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.
Shelf Talker: Sisters of the Midnight Sun is a powerful exploration of the nature of justice and the Utqiagvik community.