For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District Of Sitka, a 'temporary' safe haven created in the wake Of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1 948 collapse of the fledgling 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 panhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulfol and complex frontier city that moves to the Yiddish beat. Now, after sixty years of federal neglect, 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 has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, hik marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. He and his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Shemets, can't catch a break in any Of their outstanding cases. His new supervisor is the love of his life — and also his worst nightmare. And then someone's got the nerve to commit a murder in the flophouse he calls home. Out Of habit, obligation and a half- cocked shot at redemption, Landsman begins to investigate the killing of his neighbour, a formerl chess prodigy, and soon finds himself contending with all the powerful forces Of faith, obsession, evil and salvation that are his heritage — and with the unfinished business of his marriage to Bina Gelbfish, the one person who understands his darkest fears.

At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, an homage to 1 940s noir, and an exploration Of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.