Fireweed

If he is caught, he will be executed as a spy. Ivan Lukin is the mixed-blood son of the Russian America Company's most renowned fur trader. He speaks five languages and knows the subarctic forest, its Native inhabitants, and the Alaska fur business like no one else. As a young man he was destined for great things, but when famine and mutiny brought his world crashing down he was demoted, reassigned, and made to taste the shame of his own mistakes. Then in 1862 the Company sends him on a mission as delicate as it is dangerous: Travel alone up the River Kwifpak to spy on the British fur traders who have built an outpost illegally on Russian soil. Buried in debt, vexed by insomnia, and followed upriver by a monster who devours human souls, he has no choice but to accept. But as he lines his canoe up the broad river into the blank spaces on the map, fate hands him the most unexpected of gifts. Based around real events in Alaska's past, Fireweed is Book One of the series Seasons of Want and Plenty.