Ingrid Torfudottir moved to the North Shore of Lake Superior intending to live with her grandmother while pursuing a career as a book illustrator. Instead, she discovered her true calling as a volva-a Viking witch-serving a village founded in the Viking age by Norse settlers escaping some terrible enemy whose identity was lost to time. Now she lives in the hidden town of Villmark full-time. But her Villmarker friend Kara, undergoing a high-risk pregnancy, needs Ingrid's help navigating the modern world. Or, at least, the slice of it represented by the world's largest inland port where ocean-going ships bring goods from around the world: Duluth, Minnesota. For someone whose life has always been confined to the protective bubble of her Viking-descending community, the city overwhelms. But Kara and her husband, with the help of some of Ingrid's other friends, settle in to a cozy little apartment in a historic building close to the clinic and the hospital. A few months away from all she knows just might be doable for Kara. Yet Ingrid worries. Because something strange keeps happening in the alley behind that building. The building, with its long history, is a haven for ghosts. But what Ingrid senses just might be more than a mere haunting. It might, in fact, be something more magical than that. Something that only she as a volva can face.