An award-winning epic tale set in the magical Finnish wilderness According to rumour, the people of Nevabacka had a hint of magic in their blood, because one of their ancestors had lain with a woman of the forest folk... An old soldier carves a croft out of the Finnish forest and calls it home, but try as he might to tame the land, its wild magic endures. For centuries his descendants will work the farm, through days of plenty and famine, love and war, their fates entangled with the rhythms of the ancient wilderness, where mysterious shapes flit between the trees and danger lurks in the treacherous fen. Their lives glimmer briefly and then are gone: a young girl entranced by the forest folk, a faithless fiancé who meets his match beneath the age-old branches, a farmhand with a strange obsession... What endures is the wild, and the certainty that wherever we put down roots, the land will grow roots in us, too.
