In the summer of 1905, 29-year-old Alva Nordberg is arrested after arriving in town with a baby's corpse in a box. Alva is suspected of being a baby farmer, a so called angel maker, who took in foster children for payment and killed them through neglect. What really happened in the cottage on the island Gräddö in the Stockholm Archipelago? With the help of archived material, court records and coroner Eva Rudd, professor Johanna Sköld and genealogist Leif Mörkfors, David Lagerkrantz breathes new life into an old criminal case.