The sculptor Andreas promised his seriously ill childhood friend before her death that he would take care of her daughter Heidemarie. While his application for custody is going through the authorities, the young girl comes to her uncle and his wife. Both treat Heidemarie badly so she spends most of the time with Andreas and the hunchback beggar boy Peter. Finally, the time has come: Andreas is granted custody and also takes Peter in with him.
Uli has been the tenant of the "Glunggen-farm" for two years. His wife Vreneli gave him two children and the couple is happy. But this year, the harvest looks bad and his landlord calls in the rent, as the old man urgently needs money to satisfy the demands of his son and stepson. Desperate to make ends meet, Uli fraudulently sells a cow knowing that she does not produce any milk. He is pursued in court but is acquitted. But then, the buyer curses him... and disaster promptly strikes.
Pietro Ponz lives a happy life in the mountains on the Swiss-Italian border with his mother Lamberta. No one but his mother knows that Pietro is a girl, a deception that Lamberta was forced into by a series of tragedies almost twenty years previously. Not long after her husband Joseph Ponz died, Lamberta also lost her fragile infant son, Pietro. Whilst mourning this double loss, she began an affair with Bolzano, a notorious smuggler. After Bolzano was killed by the customs men, Lamberta gave birth to his child, a little girl that she decided to pass off as her son Pietro, in the hope of securing an inheritance from her husband's wealthy parents. Now that Pietro is fast coming of age, his tutor and grandmother are adamant that he should be sent to a religious school. Pietro escapes from the school and joins a gang of smugglers...
