A mother of ten dies in childbirth. Not unusual over a hundred years ago. The grief is never spoken of. The father remarries. The children are scattered and end up having very different fates.

The main character is a girl with big dreams for her life. But when she is working on a farm, the farmer rapes her and she becomes pregnant. No one knows who the father is but she has to live with the shame. Her life unfolds through the novel.

The story takes place in the end of the 19th century and all the convulsions in religion, politics and culture in the Faroes around the turn of the century are intertwined in the depiction of fates. The main character and what happened to her is based on real events in the Faroe Islands.