Nicky Ryan has been a police officer in Canada’s Northwest Territories for six months when she’s faced with her first homicide investigation. A teenage girl has been maimed, her mother murdered, and her father is the prime suspect. Nicky’s naïve dream of heroic crime-fighting is now up against the reality of life and death in a small Indigenous community. In Fort Gabriel, the wounds of the past still bleed, and white cops from down south are neither trusted nor welcomed.
Alison’s mother is dead and her father is in jail. Her aunt Lucy brings her to Yellowknife, where Alison desperately wants solid ground in a world that keeps shifting like melting river ice. Instead, she has to go back to Fort Gabriel to testify. She needs to hide, to find some way to feel safe in her own skin. When she turns to the faith and practices of Islam for that refuge, no one seems to accept or understand it.
It’s Nicky’s job to find out what really happened that night and bring the killer to justice, but she is learning the hard way that being the rookie, female, and lesbian member of the RCMP team will only make that job harder for her. Worse, the criminal justice system’s relentless grind can only make everything more painful for Alison, her family, and their community.
Can justice be worth the painful cost?
Reviews
"The novel deftly explores issues that evoke big feelings, such as homophobia, alcohol use disorder in Indigenous communities, suicidal ideation...The well-paced plot, which reads more like a police procedural than a mystery, is consistently entertaining, and the characters feel like real-life people with complicated, sometimes thorny motivations.
This successful debut marks a writer to watch."
"...The prose is atmospheric, and the setting is fleshed out with precision...
In the intriguing series-opening mystery novel What the Aurora Remembers, a rookie officer and a traumatized teenager navigate murder, community, and the long aftermath of violence in Canada’s frozen north."