Inspector Kristian Wold is assigned to a year-old missing person’s case. His superiors’ instructions are clear: one last review before they shelve it. Neverthe- less, when the mother of the 14-year-old missing girl asks to see him, his conscience gets the better of him and he agrees to a meeting; a meeting that has unfore- seen consequences for both of them.

When seventeen-year-old Aksel Morander encounters Amalie, it proves a turning point in his life. Not only does he fall in love for the first time, but he is introduced to a world unfamiliar and unconventional, which places everything around him in a new light. Finding himself raised up from the loneliness and darkness of what has gone before, he is forced to reassess all he holds dear as he is initiated into what makes life worth living. But jealousy and fear of abandonment lurk in the shadow of this first love. An intense novel about loneliness and agonizing passion, employing a reverse chronology that moves toward a fateful beginning.