17-year-old Aksel Morander encounters Amalie and it proves a turning point in his life. Not only does he fall in love for the first time but is introduced to a world unfamiliar and unconventional, that 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.