The Yiddish Policemen's Union

London: Fourth Estate, 2006. Paperback. Good. For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in t he Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledg ling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan p anhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. For sixty years they have been left alone, neglect ed and half-forgotten in a backwater of history. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry them off into the unknown." "But homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police ha s enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life i s a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. He and his half- Tlingit partner, Berko Shemets, can't catch a break in any of their outstan ding cases. Landsman's new supervisor is the love of his life - and also hi s worst nightmare. And in the cheap hotel where he has washed up, someone h as just committed a murder - right under Landsman's nose. Out of habit, obl igation, and a mysterious sense that it somehow offers him a shot at redeem ing himself, Landsman begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy. But when word comes down from on high that the case i s to be dropped immediately, Landsman soon finds himself contending with al l the powerful forces of faith, obsession, hopefulness, evil, and salvation.