Edvard is a young man living on his family farm in rural Norway, growing potatoes and farming sheep. He has been brought up by Sverre, his grandfather, as Edvard’s parents had died when he was only four years old. It’s all a bit of a mystery, Edvard can hardly remember his parents, but he knows that on the day they died he disappeared for four days and then turned up in a doctor’s surgery.

Edvard’s grandfather Sverre had been in World War 2 as had been his brother Einar, but they had chosen to fight on opposite sides, and the brothers had been completely estranged. When Sverre dies the local funeral director says that his coffin is all organised and has been waiting for him for years. It’s a very special coffin, art deco in design made using flame birch wood and had been sent to Sverre years before. Edvard knows that Einar had been in Shetland during the war and decides to go there to find out more about him. Eventually Edvard makes his way to the World War 1 battlefields and cemeteries as obviously the author did as he describes it all so well.

This was a great read which also involves a couple of young women, one in Norway and one on Shetland, so there’s a bit of romance of a sort, but mainly it’s a mystery, very well written, and it was translated from Norwegian by Paul Russell Garrett, he made a great job of it.