Karin moves from Finland to a small village in Sweden and finds that her love of books is viewed with suspicion.

Writer and psychiatrist Oscar Parland (1912-1997) narrates this nostalgic story about his early childhood memories and fantasies. Five-year-old Riki spends the summer of 1917 at his cosmopolitan family's summer house by the Gulf of Finland. Surrounded by other children and eccentric adults who speak Swedish, German and Russian, Riki also encounters some fantastic animal characters no one else is able to see.