28-year-old Anja Grimm is completing a forestry internship in the Bavarian Forest. During mapping work she has a disturbing encounter with the mentally retarded Xaver Leybach. Shortly afterwards, a brutal murder occurs: Xaver kills his aged, bedridden mother with a spade.

After the first shock, a terrible suspicion arises in Anja:Twenty years ago, in a similar fit of insanity, the mentally disturbed Xaver also killed her father and buried him in the forest? Traces of excavations in the forest floor, which she comes across during her mapping work, confirm her suspicion. Anja continues to investigate, obsessed with the search for an answer to her father's fate on the trail of conspicuous features in nature. The village community observes the young trainee with increasing suspicion. Rupert Gollas, with whom she played as a child, falls in love with Anja, but fears that Anja's insistence on further investigations will damage her image for the region.His interest is the same as that of his parents and grandparents' generation, because Anja's mysterious ability to read the forest leads her on the trail of something that even the local police want to keep hidden.

Twenty years ago, in a similar fit of insanity, the mentally disturbed Xaver also killed her father and buried him in the forest? Traces of excavations in the forest floor, which she comes across during her mapping work, confirm her suspicion. Anja continues to investigate, obsessed with the search for an answer to her father's fate on the trail of conspicuous features in nature. The village community observes the young trainee with increasing suspicion. Rupert Gollas, with whom she played as a child, falls in love with Anja, but fears that Anja's insistence on further investigations will damage her image for the region.His interest is the same as that of his parents and grandparents' generation, because Anja's mysterious ability to read the forest leads her on the trail of something that even the local police want to keep hidden.

Shortly afterwards, the skeleton of Anja's father's body is found. Everything points to the fact that the deranged Xaver killed him twenty years ago. When Xaver also commits suicide in the psychiatric ward a little later, his guilt seems to be established.