When precocious Mandolin MacDuff wakes up in a strange room, she feels scared, abandoned and then total emptiness turned her body into mush. But when she looked out her window, the only window, she sees a tall man driving a machine with one arm up and down, up and down. She studied him through her tears, discovered his other arm was kind of withered, hung loosely, and didnt seem to bother him. That meant he was brave. Cool! He would be her friend.

And so begins a captivating generational story; a thirty-year quest into a complex world to find her way, to learn the truth, the secret of her past and the ever illusive hakka bakka