Before the Days Lengthen

Mikaela Strand came home to Ålvik to digitize a parish archive and keep watch over her newly sober mother, not to unravel a killing. Three days after she meets Lotta Vikman, the beloved choir director lies dead at the foot of her cellar stairs. A grip-shaped bruise says it wasn't a fall. A family Bible names a brother the parish register denies. With help from a retired detective who fixes clocks, Mikaela follows sixty years of silence toward whoever is still willing to protect it.