For years, Disa has lived a quiet life, managing an English country-house hotel with her close companion, Anthony. Having learned she is terminally ill, Disa decides it is time to travel back to the village in Iceland where she was born. With enormous sensitivity, Olafsson carries the reader with Disa on her quietly heroic journey. As she goes north, events she has spent most of her life trying to forget are slowly revealed. Turned away by her mother, her young fiance murdered by the Nazis, Disa was left to find refuge as a cook in a wealthy household that contained within it the seeds of both sexual and political violence. The consequences have marked her forever; only now can she attempt to find a resolution.