SISTERS OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN

Dark doings in the unending summer daylight above the Arctic Circle.

In August 1993, Stevens was public defender for the courts of the North Slope Borough in Utqiagvik, Alaska, previously known as Barrow, a fishing town with a majority Inupiat population. While on vacation in the Lower 48, Stevens learned of the possible rape and double homicide of sisters Bernice and Wanda Ipalook of a large and prominent local family. Back in Utqiagvik, she was assigned to defend Amos Lane, a prickly suspect in the killings who had yet to be charged but was being held for misdemeanors that authorities hoped would keep him in jail while they built their case. Stevens got his bail reduced, and, when the local investigator switched his suspicions toward Bernice’s fiancé, John Adams, she succeeded in getting Lane immunity in exchange for testimony as a witness for the prosecution, meaning he would never be tried for murder. Though the case ended in a dramatic trial, most of this book focuses on Stevens’ adventures as a tanik (an outsider) among the locals. They accept her (though never entirely) as one of their own. The heady mix of true crime and clashing cultures makes for a thrilling, thought-provoking read. “The legal system was Anglo, and the location was Native,” Stevens writes. “The two didn’t fit….The Anglo system of written law, due process, and witnesses and juries…did not work well in a place where community and family values took precedence…and where even such seemingly universal qualities as time or factual evidence were blurred in the day-warping constant sunlight.” Stevens studied English before devoting herself to the law, and her talents as a writer shine through in scene after memorable scene that evoke Scandinavian noir.

Potent, morally complex storytelling that gets under the skin.