Bernardo Greene is attempting to rebuild his life. Imprisoned and tortured by Pinochet's regime for introducing his students to political poetry, he has arrived at Copenhagen's centre for rehabilitating torture victims at the age of forty-nine, to begin, to begin again. Across from the King's Garden, Michela Ibsen also seeks a new beginning. She has survived an abusive marriage and the death of a child, but does not know whether this makes her strong, or even whole. Her latest boyfriend is young, vain and dangerously possessive. Why do men hit me? Why is it happening again? Michela's eyes meet Bernardo's over a cup of coffee in the cafe across the lake. During a long Scandinavian summer of endless days and pin-point nights, these two lost souls begin to heal, to forgive and to trust themselves to love