OTwelve-year-old Defne lives with her family in a rural village. While her father teaches her the value of the soil and the importance of roots, Defne dreams of moving to the city. Their ordinary life darkens when her grandmother falls gravely ill. Sent to find the doctor, Defne wanders into the forest and discovers a group of men digging a grave, speaking of killing everyone in the village if necessary. Terrified, she returns home, but her family does not believe her.Soon the nightmare becomes reality: the doctor disappears, her father is murdered in the fields, and armed intruders storm their home. In the bloody chaos, Defne watches her mother killed before her eyes. Fleeing into the forest, she is pursued relentlessly until her stepbrother Osman appears. Together they try to escape, but survival comes at a cost. For the first time, Defne must stain her hands with blood to protect herself and Osman. Childhood innocence collides with the brutal face of violence.Defne is a raw coming-of-age story about roots and death, seen through the eyes of a young girl. It intertwines the bond to land with the harsh reality of violence, as Defne faces the question embodied in the tree she is named after: to take root, or to seek another life elsewhere?