In a remote Swedish farmhouse, an elderly farmer has been bludgeoned to death, his wife left to die with a noose around her neck. Before the old woman dies, she utters the word foreign, which may be the only real clue the police have to go on. And they need to work fast. The press has reported the dying word, and white supremacists have threatened a nearby refugee camp, vowing to take justice into their own hands. Recently divorced, overweight, drinking...

In 1939 Sweden, two Jewish sisters wait for their parents to flee the Nazis in Austria, but while eight-year-old Nellie settles in quickly, twelve-year-old Stephie feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who is as cold and unforgiving as the island on which they live.