At her father’s art exhibition, fourteen-year-old Tanja is introduced to Eg. Handsome and grey-eyed, he is a friend of her parents, a man who makes his living with words and sees something extraordinary in her. Soon, letters begin to arrive at her home in the Swedish forest. Pages spinning a private fairytale dreamed up just for her, inviting Tanja into a love that promises escape from her lonely childhood. But when the two finally meet, Tanja steps through a door into an adult experience from which there is no return, where desire and excitement soon give way to shame and control. Years later, now a poet herself and armed with the language to name what happened, she uncovers a box of Eg’s letters coated with mildew and begins to read.
