Stationmaster Arctander’s wife died in childbirth and now he can barely believe his eyes – his newborn daughter is covered in thick hair all over her body. For the local doctor it’s an unusual biological phenomenon. But her father, sunk in grief and a stickler for calm and order, is repelled. He hides little Eva and takes the greatest care that she lives her life far away from the public eye. The little girl has almost no human contact apart from with her father, her nurse, the doctor, the pharmacist and the train station employees. But Eva soon begins to long for the world to which the train tracks under her window lead. She is unusually intelligent, but the scientists and society of her era remain fascinated, above all, by the rarity value of her body. And each cautious step she takes into the unknown carries with it the danger of great humiliation.