Against his wishes, 12-year-old Niilas is sent away to spend the summer with his estranged mother in Swedish Lapland, among the indigenous reindeer-herding Sami people. Meeting his other family is initially overwhelming, particularly when he is missing his father and home in Belgium. So he resolves to leave as soon as he can. His erratic behaviour results in some alarming near misses, but before long he begins to understand that for all the beauty on display in the natural world there are as many dangers that lurk within it. When a reindeer calf and its mother are separated, he embarks on an ill-advised ‘against the clock’ search, which ultimately forces him to rethink his own relationships with those around him.