Ingrid Torfudottir juggled two separate lives for the longest time. In one life she struggled at aspiring to be a professional book illustrator, living with her grandmother in a Minnesotan fishing town on the North Shore of Lake Superior. In the other, she answered an ancestral calling to serve a village founded in the Viking age by Norse fishermen escaping some terrible enemy whose identity was lost to time.

Now she lives in the Norse village of Villmark full-time. Her house lies in the middle of town where anyone can find her. But loneliness is her companion now that her boyfriend Thorbjorn has gone far to the north to accompany her friend Loke on a mysterious quest.

But lonely doesn't mean bored, because life as a volva, a Norse witch, is never boring. And when a storm blows through, destroying all the crops and leaving too many signs of ill omen, Ingrid definitely has her hands full.

Then Loke's sister Esja starts to behave very strangely. Something is going on, and it's up to Ingrid to figure out what, before it's too late.