Per is a newly qualified social worker entering professional life. Through Per, we are confronted with welfare Norway in 1970. Over the course of a couple of short summer months, we get to know Per. He is a fairly ordinary, intelligent person. He has his problems in relation to himself and the opposite sex. He is in the process of becoming an adult. He is testing his attitudes and perceptions. He must find answers to questions that could be crucial to his future place in society.

The keeper of the light house, Ewert, lives at the coast with his wife and daughter, constantly thinking about the lost love of his past, Maria Marusjka. Worried about his daughter, about to be a woman, he makes the wrong decisions.