Rosalie Greenspace is an expatriate German woman living in rural Arkansas with her eccentric American husband Ray, who works as a crop-duster airplane pilot. They have seven children: Schnucki, the eldest son who is a US Army soldier stationed out of state; Barbara, the eldest daughter who is a good-natured overachieving college student; Schatzi, an underachieving high school student; Kindi, a flamboyant gourmet cook; teenage twin girls who are never named; and Herzi, the youngest child. Rosalie loves to shop too much to let a little thing like no money stop her. Every day she goes on lavish shopping sprees in the nearby small town of Stuttgart, Arkansas (the same name of her Stuttgart) where she forges checks, uses false credit cards, and other means to supplement her livelihood with purchases of fancy foods for Kindi to cook and various clothing and appliances for her large house. A devout Catholic Church, she has a twisted view on religion when she goes every day to a small church and confesses her sins of stealing and swindling to a local priest, believing that if she confesses her crimes to her priest, her "sins" will not become sins anymore.