As long as he can remember, Joel has lived with his father Samuel, a taciturn lumberjack, in this godforsaken place high up in northern Sweden. Now he is fifteen and finally wants to meet his mother, who left him and Samuel when he was still very small. In the past, when Joel asked about his mother, Samuel would always just shake his head and say he didn't know where she was. But suddenly there is a letter, and with it an address for his mother Jenny. Joel and his father set off to visit her in Stockholm. The departure from the silence of the forests into the noise and hustle of the big city becomes an inner journey for Joel towards a new, self-determined life. Why did Jenny just leave back then? What will happen when he finally meets her again after all these years? And what will become of him now that he has finished school?.