What if instead of turning them back the US had offered Jews fleeing Europe temporary residency in a city in Alaska? What if the fledgling state of Israel had then collapsed in 1948? What if decades later the US insists on going through with "reversion", returning the land to Alaska and only offering citizenship to a few of the Jewish residents?

And what if that is only the backdrop (or is it?) to the murder of the heroin junkie found shot in the same hotel where Jewish homicide detective Meyer Landsman sleeps and keeps the pieces of his wrecked life?

This is a rather amazing book, and it kept revealing new complicated sides. The only reason I'm not giving it five stars is that it never really pulled me in. It was always a bit too complicated, dark and amazing for me to see it as real, so I cared a little less about the fate of Sitka, and Landsman, and the solution to the murder of the heroin junkie.