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Sisters of the Midnight Sun: A Murder in Arctic Alaska

About the Book

Sisters of the Midnight Sun: A Murder in Arctic Alaska

The stunning true story of a double homicide in the vibrant native Alaskan Iñupiat community at the arctic edge of the United States --- written by the public defender at its center.

Rebecca Wright is a defense attorney living in the Lower 48 when she suddenly finds herself a widow and an empty nester. In need of a radical change, she accepts a public defender position in Utqiagvik on Alaska’s North Slope, an oil-rich area the size of Wyoming where the Iñupiat community holds great cultural, political and economic power. Though she’ll always be a tanik --- an outsider --- she works hard to gain the trust and friendship of the folks who call this singular place home.

When two well-known sisters, Bernice and Wanda Ipalook, are found murdered, Wright is tasked with representing Amos Lane, a drifter on the short-list of murder suspects. Criminal charges are looming. But this is summer in northern Alaska, the season of the midnight sun, when 24-hour sunlight makes it difficult for witnesses to confirm the time --- or even the day --- they last saw the sisters, Amos or anyone else. Wright must navigate an unreliable client, a prosecution willing to entrap her to get a conviction, a budding romance, and a community that believes Amos might deserve a different form of justice from what the tanik legal system can provide.

Weaving a detailed portrait of Utqiagvik alongside Wright’s complex self-portrait of an outsider in an isolated community, SISTERS OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN is a riveting true account that brings to vivid life a land at the edge of the habitable world.

Sisters of the Midnight Sun: A Murder in Arctic Alaska
by Rebecca Wright Stevens

  • Publication Date: July 14, 2026
  • Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime
  • Hardcover: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Counterpoint
  • ISBN-10: 1640097716
  • ISBN-13: 9781640097711