The life of the respectable Ragnerfeldt family seems cloudless. His father, Axel Ragnerfeldt, won the admiration of his contemporaries: a guy from a working-class family became a famous writer, and his novel “The Shadow,” upholding the ideals of humanity and nobility in the face of merciless circumstances, brought its author a Nobel Prize. The glow of glory fell on both the writer’s family and the family of his son. But this light is merciless and burning, and the brighter it is, the blacker the shadows. Some of them, hidden in the distant past of the humanist writer, stretch into the present day, calling into question the good name of Ragnerfeldt and as if testing the proclaimed ideals for strength.