Grist

The Alaska wilderness doesn't forgive weakness, and it doesn't forget betrayal. When Sam Carson is murdered, his dog Cheechako howls a grief so raw it splits the night - a sound that draws Bob Holliday to his partner's body and sets him on a path of vengeance. But this is no simple revenge tale. Holliday must navigate a landscape where survival demands hardness, where every stranger might be a threat, and where the truth hides beneath layers of deception. Cheechako, nursed back to health by Holliday, becomes his shadow - a silent witness to the investigation, a creature whose loyalty transcends the grave of his first master. As Holliday closes in on the killer, he discovers that the man called Dugan has woven a web of lies nearly as thick as the Alaskan snow. The confrontation is inevitable, the betrayal eventually uncovered, and justice - that most human of hungers - finally answered. The title speaks to what's left after the grinding: the grain remains, the chaff is blown away. What remains is truth, loyalty, and perhaps the possibility of beginning again.