With the death of her mother, eight-year-old Anna ends her childhood: From now on, she has to look after the nine-member family. Deprivation-rich years, which also find no end when Anna marries: Her husband Albert must be a soldier in the Second World War, and the pregnant Anna has to work hard in the farm and care sick relatives. Lonely and exposed to the harassment of the tyrannical mother-in-law, she waits for Albert, with no certainty that he will ever return.

Inspired by the real life events of Mathias Kneißl, a marginal man, son of poor farmers from Bavaria, in the late XIX Century. Mathias stole from the riches to give to the poor, becoming a hero for the rural people, and a popular social rebel. He was chased by the police until his unfortunate sentence.