It’s January 1983. During his university summer break, Ryan Bradley returns to the remote town of Nashville in New Zealand’s rugged King Country.
It’s a bittersweet he’s working long, punishing hours as a woolpresser, he needs to sell his late mother’s house, and he’s increasingly feeling like an outcast in his childhood town.
But mostly he’s haunted by memories of Sanna Sovernen, a Finnish backpacker and his secret lover, who worked with him in the shearing shed the summer before - then vanished without trace.
Now Sanna’s sister Emilia has arrived from Finland, determined to get answers - and as he’s the workmate who reported Sanna missing, she wants Ryan’s help. Because Emilia knows her sister was not the first female traveller in the area to disappear . . .