A native of Sennwald, Anna Göldi arrived in Glarus in 1765. For seventeen years, she worked as a maidservant for Johann Jakob Tschudi, a physician. Tschudi reported her for having put needles in the bread and milk of one of his daughters, apparently through supernatural means. Göldi at first escaped arrest, but the authorities of the Canton of Glarus advertised a reward for her capture in the Zürcher Zeitung on February 9, 1782. Göldi was arrested and under torture, admitted to entering in a pact with the Devil, who had appeared to her as a black dog. She withdrew her confession after the torture ended, but was sentenced on June 18, 1782 to execution by decapitation. The charges were officially of "poisoning" rather than witchcraft, even though the law at the time did not impose the death penalty for non-lethal poisoning.

The titular Marie-Louise is a young French lass who is evacuated to Switzerland when her country is overrun by the Nazis. Suffering a nervous breakdown, she is given comfort and shelter by a wealthy family. Unfortunately, living in the lap of luxury makes Marie-Louise hesitant to return home to her mother and war torn home. Eventually the girl comes to her senses, but it isn't easy.

Gilberte Montavon was a legend in her own lifetime. As a young woman, she was confidante to hundreds of thousands of Swiss-German speaking soldiers during the First World War, and remembered most of their names. She was still a teenager when the war began, and was immortalised by a song written during the war years by the Swiss-German bard and lute player, Hans Inn der Gand.