An epic novel - grand, ambitious, romantic and tragic - set in Norway at the turn of the century. The novel centres around an extraordinary woman who bewitches everyone she meets. As a young child, she is indirectly responsible for the death of her mother when she inadvertently releases the lever of a vat containing boiling lye. Her guilt becomes her obsession. Betrayal demands punishment- forgiveness does not exist for Dina, and the dead are as present as the living. Her father remarries a woman Dina cannot abide and the girl becomes increasingly remote, even savage. At sixteen, she is married off to Jacob, a friend of her fathers, and when Jacob dies mysteriously Dina becomes mistress of the mansion, and soon takes control not only of Jacob's goods and possessions, but of its people. Beautiful, eccentric, unpredictable, flamboyant, she also reveals a generous, humane side. But she is always in control, until one day a mysterious stranger enters her life and changes it forever.