Per Petterson

A chance encounter between two childhood friends, including one who escaped an abusive father, reveals how their fortunes have reversed. "[A] tale of two men whose accidental meeting one morning recalls their boyhood thirty-five years ago. Back then, Tommy was separated from his sisters after he stood up to their abusive father. Jim was by Tommy's side through it all. But one winter night, a chance event on a frozen lake forever changes the balance...

In the years before the Nazis arrive, two young people growing up in Danish Jutland have dreams of leaving their frigid coastal town while coping with distant parents, eccentric family members, and the cold winds. In the aftermath of their grandfather's suicide, the arrival of puberty and most tragically, the German invasion, their idyllic childhood changes forever.

Anticipating a divorce against a backdrop of the fall of communism, Arvid Jansen is further dismayed by his mother's diagnosis with cancer, a situation that prompts his emotionally charged quest for understanding and balance.

"Features a young Arvid Janssen, who is now twelve, on the verge of his teenage years and beginning to understand more about the world and his place in it. Set over the course of a single formative summer, the novel captures a series of episodes from Arvid's long visit to his grandparents' home in Denmark. He rides his bike around town, befriends other children on the beach, fishes for plaice, and weathers misunderstandings with his mother and grandparents,...