The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

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 1948 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, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. For sixty years they have been left alone, neglected and half-forgotten in a backwater of history. Now 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 of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his 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. Landsman's new supervisor is the love of his life—and also his worst nightmare. And in the cheap hotel where he has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under Landsman's nose. - Harper Collins

I really enjoyed this unusual book. It's Jewishness was foreign but intriguing to me. I first started to look up every Yiddish word I didn't know, which was a lot. Then I noticed that some words were used as slang which was more confusing. Meyer would call someone a latke which I know is a potato pancake. Anyway at some point I quit looking up words and just read and enjoyed the book. I did make a list one night in bed as I read of words I didn't know.

Unfortunately my dictionary is in storage and I didn't want to look up the words on my computer.

Michael Chabon also wrote The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay which I read years ago and enjoyed very much also.