Fleeing from hunger, two young brothers are sent from rural Sweden to seek their fortune in New York in the early 1850s. But in the middle of their long journey they are separated and the younger boy, Hâkan, finds himself alone on a ship bound for California. Hâkan speaks no English and has no money but, determined to find his brother I. inus, he decides to cross America in search of him. The boy, almost immediately, becomes a man ; the man, who never stops growing, becomes a giant ; the giant, despite himself, becomes an outlaw and a legend, known simply as `the Hawk'. Travelling on foot through empty and unclaimed expanses, Hâkan is driven back west over and over again. Moving against the tide of history, he experiences the Gold Rush and its effects, encounters capitalists and colonialiste, explorers and early scientists, and witnesses the formation of America, and the betrayal of its dream. In the Distance is a nova about radical foreignness - about being lost in a country that does not yet exist. Hâkan confronts desert and mountains, the threat of violence and devastating loneliness, all the white keeping the image of his brother, and the hope of companionship, in the distance.