Abandoned by her parents and left to deal with her aging and senile grandfather, Annika faces poverty, isolation, and sexual oppression. When Mark, a wealthy, married stranger on his way to a sailing competition, visits her bleak lakeside town during the dead of winter, a quiet but intense entanglement develops. Opened and transformed as a result of the affair, Annika faces possibilities normally unavailable to a person of her class, but Mark gradually falls into a forlorn, cold solitude.