Bluebird

Set in the aftermath of World War II, the novel alternates between two timelines: Eva Gerst's arrival in New York City in August 1946 and flashbacks to her earlier life as Inge von Emmerich, the privileged daughter of a Nazi doctor, during the war's final months in Germany.

In August 1946, 18-year-old Eva arrives in America aboard a refugee ship with Brigit Heidelmann, a young woman who does not speak and is prone to violent episodes when startled or approached by men. Eva has secret papers sewn into their skirt linings. She carries 27 names in her memory, the names of her father's victims, and has come to America not for a new life but for justice.

The earlier timeline introduces Inge von Emmerich, a 16-year-old from a wealthy Nazi family. Her father, Dr. Otto von Emmerich, works at a camp where he claims to "rehabilitate" enemies of Germany. Her mother is cold, controlling, and physically abusive. In February 1945, with the war collapsing, the family flees to a remote mountain lodge. Inge sneaks out to play piano at a neighbor's empty house. On the day Hitler's death is announced, Inge returns to find that her mother has shot the nanny, both of Inge's brothers, and then herself.

Inge drives to Sachsenhausen, her father's concentration camp north of Berlin, and climbs the broken perimeter wall to find piles of emaciated corpses. A surviving prisoner reveals that the Nazis perpetrated these horrors and that "the Doctor," von Emmerich, was the most feared man in the camp, conducting psychological experiments to control and destroy minds. Inge's understanding of her father inverts completely.

Fleeing the camp, Inge finds her best friend, Annemarie Toberentz, at her own ruined house, where Soviet soldiers have assaulted Annemarie. She escapes with the unconscious Annemarie and, at a bombed factory, takes identity papers from a dead woman named Eva Gerst. Rolf Steiner, her father's protégé and her intended husband, tries to force Inge to come with him. She strikes him with concrete and flees, believing she has killed him.

Assuming Eva Gerst's identity, Inge joins refugees heading toward Berlin. Mr. Liebermann, a Sachsenhausen survivor who recognizes her, whispers her father's victims' stories every night, teaching her 27 names. Among her father's papers, Eva reads the file on Anna Ptaszynska, a Polish child taken at age four and subjected to brutal conditioning designed to erase her identity. The file declares, "Anna Ptaszynska died July 11, 1934. She is gone now. She is no more" (128). Annemarie's condition worsens until she stops speaking entirely.

Months later, in a displaced persons camp, a U.S. agent named Mr. Cruickshanks identifies Eva as the Doctor's daughter and offers a deal: The American government wants not to prosecute her father but to employ him, continuing his mind-control research. If Eva helps locate him, she and Brigit, the new identity given to Annemarie, receive passage to America. Eva takes the deal while secretly resolving to find her father and kill him herself.

In New York, Elizabeth "Bets" Whittlesby of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) brings Eva and Brigit to Powell House, an Upper East Side townhouse serving as a refugee services hub. Jake Katz, a young volunteer whose extended family perished in the Holocaust, is assigned as Eva's "friend." He calms Brigit by playing a harmonica, something no one else has managed in a year. Powell House operates on radical principles of integration and generosity that baffle Eva. Cruickshanks reminds Eva of their deal, asking about Anna Ptaszynska, whom he believes is alive. Eva notices a man in shiny shoes watching from a car outside.

Eva manipulates a doctor visit for Brigit to gain access to Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, hoping to reach Dr. Schneider, a colleague who corresponded with her father. At the hospital, she spots Rolf Steiner alive and working as a janitor under a false name. Jake corners her and reveals he has been observing everything: the surveillance, the card from Cruickshanks, the bread knife she stole from the kitchen. He agrees to help.

Eva and Jake break into Rolf's apartment and find her father's bedroom, its walls covered with photographs of camp prisoners. Eva takes a metal briefcase containing Anna Ptaszynska's file, a letter from Dr. Schneider, and her mother's gun. When the Doctor and Rolf return unexpectedly, Eva and Jake hide in a closet before escaping over the roof. Jake later overhears Eva talking with Cruickshanks through a heating vent and learns that the Nazi in the apartment is Eva's father. Furious at the deception, he tells Eva to stay away from him.

Playing piano alone one night, Eva experiences vivid memories: violets, red fingernails on keys, a woman singing. She looks up the Polish word ptak and discovers it means "bird," the same meaning as her father's pet name for her, Vögelchen, and the root of "Ptaszynska." Her fragmented identities reassemble: She is Anna Ptaszynska, the Polish child her father took, conditioned, and renamed Inge. She was not his biological daughter but his first experiment. She also realizes that the dangerous Anna whom Cruickshanks seeks is not Brigit but Eva herself.

A neurosurgeon discovers Brigit has a subdural hematoma, a slow brain bleed, and recommends surgery. Eva consents. While Brigit recovers, Eva is sent to Sky Island, an AFSC country estate. There, Cruickshanks is found dead, and the man in shiny shoes reveals himself as a Soviet agent pursuing the Doctor. He gives Eva a family photograph that reveals Brigit is her biological sister. Jake arrives at Sky Island, and together they locate the Doctor at a colleague's home in New Jersey.

During a thunderstorm, the Doctor appears inside Sky Island, calling Eva Vögelchen and trying to reassert control. He reveals that Anna Ptaszynska's file was largely fabricated to attract funding. Rolf arrives holding Jake at gunpoint. Eva hides the bread knife in her waistband and distracts Rolf by revealing she is Polish, not German. Jake reaches for the hidden knife, and the gun fires twice during the struggle, grazing Jake and wounding the Doctor. Eva points the gun at her father and recites all 27 names. He pleads that he loves her. She recalls that she never killed a bird as her father claimed but set it free. She fires the last bullet into the glass wall, declaring she is not his judge. Soviet agents take the Doctor away, and Rolf dies by cyanide capsule.

Brigit wakes from surgery speaking coherently for the first time in over a year but retains the racist attitudes of her Nazi upbringing and rejects the revelation that she and Eva are sisters. Jake departs for Oxford, telling Eva she needs time to discover who she is. Eva enrolls in the New York College of Music for composition and moves in with Dr. Holtz, a German Jewish psychiatrist, and his wife. She later receives photographic proof that her father will face trial at Sachsenhausen.

Months later, Jake returns early, having traced Eva's birth parents, both Polish Communists who died in prison, and found a living aunt in Sacramento. After hearing Eva perform at a Powell House concert, he asks her to drive to California to meet her aunt. They set off in his green convertible, Eva behind the wheel. In California, Eva reads that a Nazi doctor has been acquitted at Nuremberg, confirming Cruickshanks's prediction that American justice would shield war criminals. The acquittal assures her she was right to give her father to the Soviets, though she knows the experiments he pioneered have not ended.