When light shines on something, it casts a shadow. This novel is about the shadow cast on a family and a country when light shines on its past. Lena Larsson, a young American student and aspiring writer, at the Sorbonne in Paris, was raised by her domineering Swedish immigrant Grandmother, Helga, and her stoic mother, Sofia, in the small Pacific Northwest coastal town of Astoria, Oregon. Most of their neighbors were Scandinavian immigrants. As a child, Lena, shy and withdrawn, spent much of her time with her writing journal and her cat at her side while following orders from her dominant grandmother. Lena passed many tormented nights awakened by her grandmother’s screams in her sleep. Though a good student, Lena is troubled by unrelenting insomnia which interferes with her studies and her first romance. When her mother Sofia’s sudden illness forces Lena to return to Astoria, she is urged by her dying mother to go to Sweden to try to uncover what could have caused Helga’s nocturnal outcries and a sad ending to her life. Could it have been something which occurred on the family farm when she visited Sweden the summer of 1939, just before Hitler invaded Poland? Carefully researched and rich with beautifully drawn characters that bring mid-twentieth century Astoria and Paris alive, Lena’s story lays bare some lesser known details about Sweden’s role in World War II and the tragic effects of Nazism on one fictional Swedish family for three generations.