After World War I, widower Renier has returned to his estate Horlebecq. His sole diversion is his correspondence with the Parisian Rolande, who he met during the war. Even though his family is pressuring him into marrying his sister-in-law Emily, Renier stays obsessed with Rolande and even visits her in Paris. She manages to persuade him to invest large sums of money into the "Academie de Beauté" in Paris. His reckless investments and breaking off his engagement with Emily leads to unbearable tensions at Horlebecq...
Govert Miereveld is a lawyer from a small Flemish town who also teaches in a school for girls. He harbors a secret love for one of his young students, Fran, whom he loses touch with after her graduation. Some time later, Miereveld has to attend an autopsy, and the shock of the experience deeply affects his mental balance. He finds out - or he believes so - that Fran has become a popular singer. He arranges to meet her to finally reveal his feelings. An ambiguous but perhaps tragic denouement follows which might be a figment of the protagonist's disturbed mind.
Thanks to his actions during a farm fire, the young and naive Dreas is appointed to the local fire department, which awakens various ambitions in him. He constructs primitive watchtowers everywhere and achieves some successes, partly due to the activities of an arsonist. He is then allowed to attend a course at the fire academy in Maastricht. Back in his village, he fails during a fire at the local bakery, where everything goes wrong. Dismissed from his position, he finds new employment as a market vendor with a fire extinguisher he invented.
Around 1850 Baas Gansendonck who has an inn looks down on the farmers. He wants his daughter Lisa to marry the baron of the village. But she is in love with Karel, the son of a simple brewer.
The Kiekeboe family goes on vacation to the "The New Paradise". Camping Along rides Kiekeboe a man with a wound from which white blood comes. An ambulance takes the man chased him. Surprised, the family decides to forget the incident and continue their journey.
Den Bompa Jos Vleugels is the widower of the bomma Anna and lives with his grandson Leo. He has 2 sons, the eldest is Paul Vleugels, who married aunt Josée Clinckhamers at the beginning of the series. Later in the series, however, they divorce and Paul leaves on a world tour and continues to live in Australia.