If that wasn't galling enough, Jayce becomes good friends with Jacob and urges him to join an Arctic expedition with him, leaving her alone again. Leah and Jacob have a happy and close relationship, a strong commitment to faith, and love their northern life. While they both want marriage and their own families, finding partners was difficult in their isolated outpost, so when Leah's 30th birthday arrives, she becomes more depressed about that dream turning into a reality.

Despite her hardened heart, when Jayce gets badly injured Leah does everything she can to help, but she knows the situation is beyond her skills as a healer. With the help of some of the local Alaskan natives, Jacob and Leah make an arduous boat journey to get Jayce to a doctor in Nome. As Jayce recovers, they can't quite grasp why a sophisticated white woman, Mrs. Helaina Beecham, is so obsessed about getting Jayce to Seattle. For her part, the determined Helaina wants justice done for the injuries and death suffered by her family and her goal is to see Jayce in jail for his heinous crimes.

In this opening book of her new Alaskan Quest series, Tracie Peterson holds you spellbound in the rugged terrain of the midnight sun to unravel this mystery. Her research on the native Alaskans and their customs is well integrated into the interesting storyline and she effectively highlights the isolation and remoteness by the deft way she brings in details of World War I and other events happening in the outside world. While I found Leah's bitterness a bit overdone, I was impressed with the interactions between the strong willed Helaina and Jacob as he gets her thinking about justice tempered with mercy and his own need to do the same. From the cliff-hanging ending, you will hunger for the next book and to hear more about what happens to these two! Meanwhile, you can re-read this one, as there is good hearty fare and a sense of God's purpose in it.

Overall rating:
Sensuality rating: Sweet

Reviewer: Audrey Lawrence
August 22, 2006