Pastor Olof Helmersson, octogenarian, returns to Avabäck, a town in northern Sweden where he lived long ago. It brings with it a folding bicycle and an objective: to "undo" its Christian mission, to become an atheist missionary. During the decades he has spent outside the region, living on the coast, he has come to the conviction that God does not exist and life has no meaning. He believes that it is time to disappoint all those whom in his youth he converted with his fervor, his thunderous words and his accordion. But a task like this is not without obstacles. For starters, most of his former parishioners are dead. Furthermore, it does not seem necessary to expel God from the region: the religious community has dissolved. The pulpit of the church has become a hive, and the church itself is now a place where people gather to spend the afternoon playing cards. Only Gerda, now on the verge of death, has been waiting: he cannot die until the pastor has answered all his questions. In war and peace, a woman without weapons fights for her daughters. As in the old itinerant agriculture, it grazes, tombs and burns so that these girls have a place to return to.

The north that Lindgren portrays in this fascinating novel is full of unforgettable characters that live mired in myth: it is a parsimonious and depopulated region where a good aged brandy purifies all sins. Nature dominates the scene, creating an atmosphere of enormous beauty and deep spirituality. In the ironic game of the paradox, Aguardiente reflects on the richness of each human existence, the mystery of faith and that God who, as Elias Canetti says, whether it exists or not, has been so long between us that one cannot avoid talking about it.