Sisters of the Midnight Sun

The stunning and complex story of a gruesome double homicide in the vibrant Inupiat community at the northernmost edge of the Alaska—and the public defender who represented the drifter at its center

In her early forties, Rebecca Wright, a defense attorney living in Olympia, Washington, found herself suddenly widowed and an empty nester. It was time for a radical change. She passed the Alaska Bar exam and accepted a Public Defender position in Alaska’s North Slope, an oil-rich area the size of Wyoming where the native Inupiat community holds great cultural, political, and economic power. Though Rebecca will always be a tanik—an outsider—through her hard work and dedication she gained the trust and friendship of both the Native and non-native folks who call this singular place home. When two well-known sisters, Bernice and Wanda Ipalook, are found murdered, Rebecca is tasked with representing Amos Lane, a drifter brought up on misdemeanor charges but rumored to be just days away from being arrested for the murders. With criminal charges looming and the midnight sun making it difficult for witnesses to confirm the time—or even the day—they last saw the sisters (or Amos), Rebecca must navigate a client who is giving her mixed signals, a prosecution willing to entrap her to get what they want, a budding romance, and a community that believes Lane deserves a different form of justice than what the legal system can provide.

Weaving a detailed portrait of Utqiagvik alongside Rebecca’s complex self-portrait, this true account addresses the epidemic of violence against indigenous women, indigenous teen suicide, the negotiations between competing value systems, and the limits of justice. Shot through with a redemptive throughline where individuals are judged not by their worst actions but by their best, Sisters of the Midnight Sun celebrates a community at the edge of the habitable world where unlikely partnerships are forged.