When the Americans make an offer to buy land in Iceland to build a NATO airbase after the Second World War a storm of protest is provoked throughout the country Narrated by a country girl from the north the novel follows her experiences after she takes up employment as a maid in the house of her Member of Parliament Her observations & experiences expose the bourgeois society of the south as rootless & shallow & in stark contrast to the age-old culture of the solid & less fanciful north