The young Frederick Zen Zaenen, who was born with a goiter in the Wallis occupied by Napoleon's troops, is rejected by his father, an influential aristocrat from Upper Wallis. Frederick endures all humiliations and falls in love with the mysterious maid Eugènie in the thermal baths of Leukerbad, who becomes the woman of his life. Feministically shaped from the day of her birth, she trains to become a midwife and becomes embroiled in a lifelong struggle against the church and societal conventions. For Frederick and Eugènie, there is no future in the confines of Wallis. They join a group of emigrants that takes them from the landscape at the foot of the Rhône Glacier to the far reaches of Europe, to the newly founded settlement of Zürichtal in Crimea.