In the middle of the 19th century, a young boy called Hind tries to manage a poverty-stricken farm near Otepää, South-Estonia. Converting to the czar’s religion would enable him to relocate to a warm country but the manor, county and village will not set him free. Nor will the fields and spirits of the ancient Palanumäe farm. In this poetic story told in a Southern dialect, young people fight with the land, work and destiny in order to survive.
The short novel „Trees Were, Trees Were Tender Brothers“ (1979) by Mats Traat is the prologue to Traat’s novel sequence „Go up the Hills“ that covers the period of one century.