The small coastal town of Astoria, Oregon is the beginning setting of this mysterious story of inter-generational trauma.

Lena Larson, a shy young girl, growing up in an all-woman household with a domineering Swedish grandmother, Helga and a stoic mother, Sofia, a seamstress, suffers from hearing her grandmother scream at nights. Neither she nor her mother know the cause of Helga's nocturnal outcries. Lena aspires to be a writer and spends her days writing in her journal with her cat, Pumpkin, always at her side. When Lena begins to suffer from insomnia, she and her mother know they must try to find out what happened to Grandmother when she visited her brothers in Sweden in 1939, just before Hitler invaded Poland and WWII began. What secrets did Helga leave behind? Why won't she reveal certain details about missing photos in her old photo album when she shares it with Lena.

When Lena receives a scholarship to study at the Sorbonne in Paris, she is excited to begin a new life. Just when she starts to overcome her shyness and meets Joseph, an artist, a possible romantic partner, she is called back to Astoria to her mother's deathbed. Her mother urges her to go to Sweden and uncover what happened there on the family farm in 1939, to learn more about the mysterious death of Grandmother's sister-in-law, Rebecca, Johann's Jewish wife from Poland and to bury her grandmother's ashes.

During her winter break from the Sorbonne Lena travels to Sweden by train to meet her relatives. She arrives to learn the distressing news that the one person who can help her, Johann has died. There remains only two other people who can shed light on the mystery of the past: Hanna, the second wife to Johann and Lena's endearing second cousin, Axel, who is mentally challenged. Lena's search for the truth of her family's history takes her on an interesting and mystery-packed journey with an unexpected twist at the end.