In these parts, they called her Queen. And she was queen of rags, of sagging mouldering roofs, of nothing. On a bleak, windswept farm on the coast of rural Sweden, where the misty white light is as ‘mute as the blind milk of membrane around an extinguished eye’, beneath the oppressive silence, the salt spray and the grind of daily farmwork, a passionate, yearning, unspoken human drama takes place. At the centre of this story is Judit Lindgren, known as the ‘Queen’, strong as a whip, stately and stern. She holds her little realm tight, eking out a hard life, buttoning her emotions, dealing with the inadequacies of her menfolk, until the surprise arrival of a Polish widow from New York upends her carefully balanced world and offers the possibility of redemption.