<DIV><p>&ldquo;Highly refreshing setting, a great cast of characters and an intriguing plot.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Bloomsbury Review</i></p> <p>&ldquo;Atmospheric.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The New York Times Book Review</i></p> <p>&ldquo;Flashes of the dark poetry of Ross MacDonald.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Chicago Tribune</i></p> <p>&ldquo;A rich stew of deception and menace.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Anchorage Daily News</i></p> <p>&ldquo;Outstanding . . . satisfies on all levels.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Kansas City Star</i></p> <p>Sitka, Alaska, is a subarctic port surrounded by snow-dusted mountains. In addition to honest work, there is a lot of alcohol consumed and other people&rsquo;s money appropriated. Bars are loud, fights are mean. Rowdy youths party in the ancient Russian cemeteries, sitting on overturned gravestones. Sitka is hardly straight-laced, but murder is uncommon enough to be widely noted&mdash;like the Indian big-game guide killed by an ex-miner obeying voices from the earth&rsquo;s center. The victim&rsquo;s mother, a Tlingit Indian, summons to her nursing home a local investigator named Cecil Younger. The case is old and ostensibly solved. She wants him to investigate anyway. What he unearths is a virtual fairytale contrived to hide a primal conspiracy.</p> <p>Set against the modern Alaskan frontier and the surviving pantheism of its indigenous population, <i>The Woman Who Married a Bear</i> is a brooding and exotic novel that touches on mysteries far beyond the conventional.</p> <p><b>John Straley</b>, a criminal investigator for the state of Alaska, lives in Sitka with his son and wife, a marine biologist who studies whales. He is the Shamus Award-winning author of <i>The Curious Eat Themselves</i> and <i>The Music of What Happens</i>.</p></DIV>