It is 1938. A corpse is found preserved in a peat bog on the border between Germany and Denmark. The body in the bog is that of a 19th-century soldier bent double underneath his coat as if asleep - a disquieting reminder of old ferocious battles fought over the region known as Schleswig-Holstein at a time when a new world war is just about to begin. The border area is steeped in myth and folklore, which at times seem to intermingle with present-day reality in baffling ways. Three men - a Danish policeman, a young German Jewish refugee and a German professor - venture out into the quagmire to find clues to the soldier's identity. Soon afterwards, the professor disappears without a trace. It is 2000. Esm- Olsen, who works as a cleaner in the Institute for Historical Studies in Copenhagen, stumbles upon documents concerning the find in the peat bog while cleaning up after a student party.

An amateur historian with a quirky personality, she can't resist 'borrowing' the documents to read at home. Thus begins a many-layered journey into the past, both real and imagined. Esm-'s childhood, her relationship with her eccentric dead father, the particular opulence of 1960s American automobiles, a brilliantly delineated mutt called Terror, a packet of letters to the writer J D Salinger, the young soldier's drunken rape and the discovery of the German professor's body down a well are subtly interwoven to create a multivalent, atmospheric tale of mystery, memory and remembrance.