The Singing of the Dead by Dana Stabenow
With MIDNIGHT COME AGAIN, Dana Stabenow took a giant step forward, delivering her most ambitious book to date in her series of novels about life and death in Alaska. Now, with Aleutian PI Kate Shugak on her way toward recovering from devastating recent events, Stabenow ups the ante once again with a daring novel paralleling the lives of her series characters with their ancestors, the settlers of the wilderness of America's forty-ninth state. In THE SINGING OF THE DEAD, Kate joins the staff of a political campaign to work security for a Native woman running for state senator. The candidate has been receiving anonymous threats, and Kate, who went to college with two of the staffers, is to become her shadow, watching the crowds at rallies and fundraisers. But just as she's getting started the campaign is rocked by the murder of the staff researcher, who, Kate discovers, was in possession of some damning information about the pasts of both candidates. In order to track the killer, Kate will have to delve into the past, in particular the grisly murder of a good-time girl during the Klondike Gold Rush in 1915.