“Remember the war, Mother? Remember how it all started?”

The war breaks out and nine-year-old Eero’s father is killed at the front. Widowed and broken by grief, Eero’s mother is unable to look after her son. She sends him in refuge to Sweden, a neutral country whose welfare is untouched by the war.

Life in a foreign country doesn’t however get off on a good start. Eero doesn’t seem to match the expectations of the Swedish family and austere Mother Signe has him working as farmhand. Everyone around Eero speaks Swedish and he ends up living in a disconnected world of his own.

Worst of all, the letters from Eero’s mother are always addressed to Signe. One day Eero gets hold of a letter from his mother in which she writes that Eero should perhaps stay in Sweden for good. Eero is shocked, but abandoned by his real mother, he becomes more and more attached to Signe. Little by little Eero becomes part of the new family and Signe becomes his mother.

But the war ends and the children must return to Finland. Once again Eero has to leave his home and start all over again. The scars of war have to be buried in the past.

On the death bed of his aged mother, Eero looks his past in the eye. After decades of silence, Eero is finally ready to talk about the war, his mother's choices and his own pain.