Trine and her mother live in a cottage on the German coast. The mudflats that surround them disappear and reappear with the North Sea tides. The family leads a lonely existence, but each person has adapted in their own way. Anna roams the beaches collecting flotsam and jetsam to make art, while Trine loves playing on a war-time shipwreck. That is, until Trine's brother appears. Everyone assumed that he had been killed in the war but what if he survived?

In her taut style, Meike Ziervogel tells a coming-of-age story from 1950s Germany – a place still haunted by war. A place where people pretend not to notice the ghosts.