Ursula Kopp

Widowed baker Zürrer has to raise his three children, who all turn out to be disappointments to him in various ways.

Karl Wieser, the Zurich tram driver, is a henpecked husband. When he is chosen to give a demonstration ride to foreign experts, he gains favor with his wife Anni. The mother is also particularly proud of Helen, her older daughter in America, who has made a good match, her younger sister Inge, who is destined to become a world-famous singer, and her son Herbert, who is studying medicine. But it turns out that she is succumbing to her own delusions and deceit.

Janet Freeman, the daughter of the English nuclear researcher Clive and his wife Lucy, is kidnapped.