Kuningasjätkä is set in North Karelia in the mid-1950s and depicts the summer of 10-year-old Topi at the boating site with his widowed father Tenho.

The daughter of two famous writers, Helena upholds her late father's reputation, reciting his poems on various occasions and cherishing the memory of the legend. Relations with her mother have deteriorated since she moved to Sweden. Helena blames her mother for abandoning her father. Helena and her mother meet again as Helena's mental health deteriorates and in order to cope, she must face reality through her mother's memoirs. Helena becomes intensely involved in the story and relives it by imagining herself in her mother's place.