Elizabeth Behr (Betsy)

I love mysteries, so when I came across this book I put it in my cart. Many years ago, I'd seen the movie Savage Innocents, starring Anthony Quinn. The setting there was sometime in the first half of the 20th century. I think of White Heat, set in the first half of the 21st century, as an update on Arctic life. Edie Kiglatuk knows the old ways and follows them as she is able. No longer a trapper, she often works as a guide for visitors, even tourists, to that seemingly bleak and forbidding area of North America. Edie is also a teacher. These two occupations provide her income. Visitors without guides are sometimes found, or what is left of them is found in the spring. Sometimes sooner. I hope you will be as entranced as I was with McGrath's descriptive narration of Edie Kiglatuk's life and history and obstinate insistence on ferreting out the truth when the death of a visitor is written off as an accident by the mayor of her small village. The beauty and danger of the arctic might even urge you to become a tourist or a visitor. Be sure to hire a guide.