Alaska's worst fire in decades left behind 125,000 acres of razed forest, three feet of ash, and one unburnt corpse. A ten-year-old boy has hired Kate Shugak to find his father. Daniel Seabolt, a teacher at the Chistona Public School, has been missing since the summer, but his disappearance has never been reported to the authorities. The boy's grandfather, the Right Reverend Pastor Simon Seabolt, has forbidden the tight-knit community of Chistona even to speak Daniel's name. Unfortunately for her client, Kate is already investigating the body of a man found buried under the ash of last year's forest fire. At first she thinks Daniel was caught out in the blaze, but the coroner returns his cause of death as anaphylactic shock. And although the body is without clothes or shoes, it is strangely untouched by the fire...
