In 1948, when he is 15, Trond spends a summer in the country with his father. The events - the accidental death of a child, his best friend's feelings of guilt and eventual disappearance, and his father's decision to leave the family for another woman - will change his life forever.

Nineteen-year-old Albert was raised in a Bavarian orphanage due to the mental incapacities of his much older father. Unfortunately, he never knew his mother. When Albert discovers his father only has five months left to live, he takes the old man and sets off on an adventurous voyage to find his real mother. Their venture leads them into the distant past, way back to a night in August 1912, and to the story of a forbidden love.