The Allies execute Gretel's father for war crimes after finding him guilty as the commander of Auschwitz.

Gretel and her mother flee Germany with false papers, adopt new names, and hide in Paris.

Émile lures Gretel to a warehouse where French Resistance members brutally shave her scalp and Nathalie's.

Nathalie dies from alcoholism and grief, and Gretel boards a ship to start a new life in Australia.

At the Sydney bar where Cait works, Gretel spots a man she recognizes as Kurt Kotler.

Gretel takes Kurt's young son Hugo on a ferry, intending to kill him and herself.

Unable to kill Hugo, Gretel meets Kurt at a café but chooses not to turn him in to nearby police.

Gretel moves to London, finds work at Harrods, and begins a romantic relationship with David Rotheram.

A Holocaust documentary featuring Gretel's own family causes her to flee the theater and throw herself before a bus.

After Gretel confesses her Nazi past to David, he excoriates her and ends their relationship.

Edgar tells Gretel he cannot hate her despite her past, and she later gives her newborn daughter up for adoption.

A family consisting of film producer Alex, actress Madelyn, and nine-year-old Henry moves into the flat below Gretel.

Gretel witnesses Alex drag a self-harming Madelyn inside at night and aggressively manhandle Henry over his injured arm.

Gretel invites Alex to her flat the night before Caden's wedding and kills him with a box cutter.

In prison, Gretel opens her jewelry box, studies a family photograph, and finally says her brother's name aloud.

All the Broken Places follows Gretel from the ruins of Nazi Germany through a haunted old age in London. After her father, the commander of Auschwitz, is executed by the Allies, Gretel flees Europe with a false identity and spends decades trying to outrun her past. Her attempts at escape—through exile in Paris and Sydney, a near-suicidal encounter in London, and a carefully hidden life at Winterville Court—bring no lasting peace. In 2022, the abuse of a neighbor's child forces Gretel to act decisively for the first time, killing the boy's father to protect him. She is arrested and imprisoned, but the experience finally liberates her from a lifetime of silence. Only behind bars can she open her jewelry box, face a photograph of her family, and speak her dead brother's name aloud.

The headline events of Gretel's life from the war's end to her final confession.

Gretel's father takes her inside Auschwitz and points to a harsh stone building he calls 'the chamber.'

Gretel encourages Bruno to sneak under the Auschwitz fence to help Shmuel find his father, treating it as a cruel joke.

Gretel and Nathalie arrive in Paris under false identities, sharing a cramped flat while Nathalie drinks heavily.

A French boy shows Gretel sympathy in the Luxembourg Garden but spits in her face on hearing her German accent.

Gretel enters Émile Vannier's haberdashery shop on a pretense and persuades him to meet her at a coffee shop.

Over coffee, Émile describes how the Nazis tortured and killed his brother Louis, a member of the French Resistance.

After the head-shaving, Gretel and Nathalie flee to Rouen, where Gretel learns English and prepares to leave Europe.

Gretel follows Kurt Kotler home and watches him push his son on a garden swing through an iron fence.

Gretel stages a fall outside Kurt's house and uses the opportunity to befriend his wife, Cynthia.

Gretel departs Australia, writing Cait an apology and sending Cynthia a letter that exposes Kurt's true identity.

At Harrods, Gretel meets Miss Aaronson, a Holocaust survivor who openly displays her concentration camp tattoo and will not hide it.

Edgar tells Gretel that David's mother, father, and sister were killed by the Nazis at Treblinka.

Madelyn begs Gretel to collect Henry from school and warns that Alex would kill her if he ever found out.

Gretel and Eleanor visit the police station together and describe Alex's abuse to Detective Kerr.

Gretel is convicted and placed in a low-security prison she considers far preferable to a retirement village.

Beneath the novel's headline events lies a web of smaller, crucial moments that explain how Gretel became who she is. Her father's guided tour of Auschwitz's gas chamber, and her casual cruelty in encouraging Bruno to cross the fence, plant the seeds of guilt that define her entire life. In Paris, Nathalie's desperate self-deception and Émile's manipulative courtship deepen Gretel's trauma, while their flight to Rouen signals the beginning of a rootless existence. In Sydney, Gretel's careful pursuit of Kurt—from tailing him home to staging a fall outside his house—reveals her compulsion to confront the past even as she fears it. In London, a Holocaust survivor's defiant tattoo and the story of David's murdered family remind Gretel that history is inescapable, and her eventual decision to report Alex to the police marks her first act of confronting wrongdoing rather than burying it.

The pivotal supporting moments that shaped Gretel's long and guilt-ridden journey.

Inside an Auschwitz warehouse, Gretel meets Shmuel, a nine-year-old Jewish boy hiding and cleaning bullet shells to survive.

Shmuel speaks Bruno's name, and Gretel realizes with shock that her brother has been secretly visiting him at the fence.

Gretel goes to Émile's house, where the sex is aggressive and gives her no pleasure.

Gretel boards a ship to Australia and meets Cait, who immediately senses that Gretel is hiding something serious.

Cait tells Gretel the mysterious bar regular is named Kozel and warns her there is something unsettling about him.

Gretel examines the newspaper Kurt left behind at the bar and finds he has drawn a fence on it.

Gretel returns home to find Cait's friend Shelley there and quietly realizes that Cait is a lesbian.

Gretel survives a bus collision and wakes in the hospital to find Edgar sitting quietly beside her.

A doctor tells Gretel she is several months pregnant while she is still recovering from her injuries in hospital.

Edgar writes to Gretel that he wants to hate her for her past but finds that he loves her instead.

Caden crawls under a construction fence behind Winterville Court to explore, and Gretel strikes him so hard he falls.

During treatment at a psychiatric hospital, Gretel finally tells Dr. Allenby the full truth about her Nazi past.

During a garden conversation, Gretel pulls up Henry's sleeve and discovers a large bruise he claims came from a fall.

Alex grabs Gretel's wrist in the garden and threatens to publicly expose her true identity if she interferes with his family.

Gretel attends Caden and Eleanor's wedding, enjoys the day pleasantly, and returns home as though nothing has happened.

All the Broken Places turns on moments of revelation and choice that force Gretel to see herself clearly. Meeting Shmuel at Auschwitz—and realizing he knows Bruno—marks the beginning of a guilt she can never shake, while her joyless encounter with Émile foreshadows the violence soon to follow. Across decades, coded signals accumulate: a fence drawn on a bar newspaper, a stranger's camp tattoo, a doctor's unexpected announcement in a hospital bed. Edgar's letter declaring his love despite everything gives Gretel a fragile foundation, but her breakdown in 1970—when she strikes her own son for crossing a fence—reveals how deep the trauma runs. In 2022, discovering bruises on a young boy's arm and enduring a man's threats against her identity are the final turning points that push Gretel to abandon a lifetime of silence and act with the decisive courage she never found before.

The key discoveries and decisions that pushed Gretel toward reckoning with her past.