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Maastal is a seaport town in southern Denmark, where people have made a living by the sea for generations. This king-like sea is the background of their lives and the place of their destiny. After men become sailors, they go to many ports in the world. Many of them narrowly escape death and end up buried under the sea. Women will stay on land and live in fear day and night, waiting for their lovers to return. Generations of young souls were drawn to the songs of the sirens, grew up in the absence of their fathers, and then became sailors. In 1848, the town was involved in the First War of Dande, and not everyone who fought for glory survived. Lauris Madsen survived thanks to a pair of mysterious boots, but soon escaped back to sea and disappeared from sight. After his son Albert inevitably became a sailor, he embarked on a long journey alone to find his father. Many years later, he took a head and returned to the town where women increasingly maintained daily life, until he met a boy and a widow. And this woman has made up her mind to end it all and rescue everyone from the unruly ocean... There are ordinary lives in small towns and children's farces, as well as adventures at sea and wars that destroy the human soul. The novel takes readers to witness the lives of three generations, two world wars, and one hundred years; it also sails through a vast world: from the barren rocks of Newfoundland to the lush plantations of Samoa, from the lamest pub in Tasmania to the frozen coast of northern Russia. This is a coming-of-age story, a family legend, and an elegy dedicated to a bygone era. It outlines for us an eternal picture of the absurdity and cruelty of fate, human violence and love, passion and fragility.