The Sixteen Trees of the Somme

In the autumn of 1971, a couple is found deceased in France, in an enclosed, wooded area that once was a battlefield in the first World War. Their three-year-old son, Edvard, has disappeared without a trace. Four days later, he turns up in an entirely different part of the country.

No one knows where Edvard has been, and he grows up on a mountain farm in the Gudbrandsdalen valley in Norway, together with his taciturn grandfather.

What was his parents doing in the enclosed grove, and was it an accident when they stepped on an old gas grenade from the war years?

And for the grandfather’s funeral, who is it that has sent an exquisitely elaborate coffin, crafted from a sort of wood never seen before?