It is the summer of 1912 in a fishing village on the Danish coast, where visitors while away the long, light-filled days. For twelve-year-old Malte, it is a summer of freedom and discovery. He roams the beaches and observes the complicated lives of the adults around him. To escape their dramas, he retreats into a fantasy world of his own making, where ships sail to exotic lands. But when one day he trips over a salt-eaten coffin, washed up on the shore, and finds inside the body of a dead sailor, the voice that whispers in Malte's ear starts to take on a life of its own. It tells the secret story of the amber collector who made his fortune combing the beach for sea gold.