At the June 1951 Mannheim Officers’ Wives Club meeting, Ethel Gathers tells her friend, Julia, that she and her husband, Bert, are adopting a three-year-old girl named Anke from St. Hildegard’s orphanage. She then addresses the full club, describing the plight of biracial children born to German mothers and African American soldiers. These children face ostracism and need homes. Dorothy Hansen, the club president, and Julia support her proposal. The club forms committees to provide gift baskets for struggling mothers and support for the orphanage and children.

On Saturday, Ethel and Bert arrive at the orphanage to pick up Anke. The children greet Ethel warmly while Bert begins playing catch with some boys. Anke rushes to Ethel, calling her mum. As they prepare to leave, Franz, a 10-year-old boy Bert has bonded with, clings to Bert’s hand and pleads to come home with them. Bert and Ethel agree to adopt Franz as well. Sister Ursula supports their decision and prepares temporary papers for Franz.

At their apartment, Anke delights in a teddy bear while Franz explores timidly. The new family of four dances together in the living room. Over dinner, Bert says he will apply for a larger apartment once the adoptions are official. That night, too excited to sleep, Ethel repeatedly thanks God and recalls her experience at the Lourdes shrine.

During Motor Pool Monday in September 1948, Ozzie and his fellow soldiers perform vehicle maintenance while First Sergeant Petty barks warnings about thoroughness. Ozzie’s friends, Morgan and Satchel, tease him about his weekend activities with Jelka. The soldiers discuss the isolation of being overseas and their need for female companionship. Ozzie has been seeing Jelka for several weekends, meeting at a rooming house that caters specifically to Black soldiers and German women.

On a Sunday off, Ozzie has a picnic with Jelka in a park. He still has not heard from his girlfriend back home, Rita. When Jelka suggests they visit her cousin, Elga, in Frankfurt for his three-day leave, Ozzie agrees.

They take a train to Frankfurt, a city showing heavy signs of war damage. Walking hand in hand through the streets, Ozzie experiences a sense of freedom and ease he never feels in America. They meet Elga, who leaves them the apartment. Jelka tells Ozzie she just wants to stop being afraid, alluding to wartime trauma.

The next morning, Ozzie goes out for bread and stops at a café. He unexpectedly runs into Clara, the nurse he met on the ship. Clara tells him about the frustrating racism she faces as an army nurse, being forbidden to treat white patients. Ozzie shares his own frustration about not being placed in the intelligence unit despite his qualifications. Clara realizes Ozzie is with a German woman and expresses disappointment, calling them “Veronikas” (152). She laments that Black women are overlooked by both white and Black men.

When Ozzie returns to the apartment, he finds Jelka curled on the floor in a panic attack. She was terrified he had abandoned her, recalling how her two brothers left for the war and never returned. Ozzie comforts her, promising he will always come back, though the words feel untrue to him.

After two days of hard rain and a leak in the girls’ gym roof, basketball practice moves to the boys’ gymnasium in October 1965. Sophia arrives to find Max and Claude, his roommate, already practicing. Coach Fletcher announces a friendly scrimmage between the boys’ and girls’ teams.

During the scrimmage, Max guards Sophia and they trade flirtatious taunts. Sophia scores a jump shot against him. Late in the game, Max accidentally barrels into Sophia, knocking her to the floor. As he helps her up, he says, “Es tut mir soleil. Moge Gott mit dir sein” (158). The German words have a strange, disorienting effect on Sophia.

After the scrimmage, which the boys win, Sophia lingers until Max emerges from the boys’ locker room. She asks what he said on the court, and he translates the phrase as “I’m so sorry, may God be with you” (158).  Max explains that he was born in Germany and came to the United States when he was around five. Claude interrupts to remind Max about Debate Club and asks Sophia to join. As it is raining heavily and Sophia’s umbrella is broken, Max gives her his. Walking back to her dorm, Sophia puzzles over the German phrase, feeling she has heard it before.

In July 1951, Ethel works to create a family routine with Anke and Franz. She worries about Franz, who is quiet and pensive but opens up around Bert. Sister Ursula had explained that Franz’s mother had tuberculosis and he was found begging for food before arriving at the orphanage.

After three weeks, Ethel takes the children to visit their friends at the orphanage. She discusses the orphanage’s needs with Sister Ursula, who mentions they need shoes. When it is time to leave, Ethel finds Franz playing marbles with his best friend, a boy named Heinz. Franz pleads with Ethel to let Heinz come home with them. Seeing the boys’ bond, Ethel spontaneously agrees. As they prepare to leave, Heinz takes the hand of his younger sister Monika. Unwilling to separate siblings, and with an encouraging nod from Sister Ursula, Ethel agrees to take Monika as well. The Gathers family instantly expands from four to six members.

When Bert arrives home from work, he is unfazed by the two additional children and simply notes they will need more chairs. While grocery shopping at the commissary, the financial reality of feeding four children sets in for Ethel as she mentally tracks costs. She runs into Dorothy Hansen and updates her that she has adopted four children, not two. They discuss adding a shoe drive to the end-of-summer picnic. Ethel returns home to her happy, waiting children.

By January 1949, six months into his deployment, Ozzie feels overworked, and homesick, missing his mother and Rita. On payday, he is surprised to see Jelka waiting outside the base gate, which she has never done before. She says she needs to talk, but he is on duty so they agree to meet at the Federal Eagle Club that evening.

At the club, Jelka pulls Ozzie into a back supply room and breaks down, telling him she is pregnant. Ozzie is shocked, believing they had been careful. Jelka explains the dire situation for an unmarried German woman pregnant with a Black soldier’s child. She will lose her rations and face harassment by police, including forced venereal disease checks. The authorities had already stopped her after seeing her with Ozzie and sent her for a VD examination.

Feeling a responsibility not to abandon his child as his own father did, Ozzie tells Jelka they will figure it out. Distraught, he returns to his friends and orders a bottle of bourbon.

In November 1965, Sophia has a violent night terror about a kitchen fire. Willa throws water on her to stop her screaming. For the first time, Sophia describes the recurring dream to someone: being in a kitchen with small children as flames erupt everywhere, and trying to save the children as fire shoots up her arms. Willa reveals her father is a doctor and suggests he could help. Sophia internally resolves not to involve Willa’s father or reveal her problem further.

Willa shifts the topic to the upcoming Old South Ball, revealing that Claude plans to ask Sophia. Later, Sophia confides to Miz Peaches that she has nothing to wear to the ball. The lunch lady offers to find her a gown from the local NAACP pageant.

On the night of the dance, Miz Peaches arrives with a stunning seafoam-green dress and helps Sophia prepare. Claude, her date, is awestruck. As they approach the Magnolia Clubhouse, boys dressed in Confederate uniforms taunt them with racist slurs. Inside, the clubhouse is decorated like a Southern plantation.

Sophia joins her friends, including Willa and Max, and dances with Claude while watching Max and Willa together. She slips outside for fresh air and Max joins her on a bench. They watch other students build a bonfire. Max confesses he hates fire and reveals he was adopted from an orphanage in Germany and was caught in a kitchen fire there as a child. He shows her a burn scar on his arm. When Sophia touches it, she feels a spark. His story triggers flashes of her own recurring nightmare about a kitchen fire with women in black skirts.

Sophia reveals she also has a burn scar on her thigh and shows it to him. As Max touches her scar, Sophia closes her eyes, sees herself opening a door in a dark room, and says “Auf Wiedersehen” (182) in perfect German, surprising them both. When Willa and Claude arrive, Max smiles and mouths “Auf Wiedersehen” (183) to Sophia.

Ozzie wakes severely hungover after learning of Jelka’s pregnancy. He is 15 minutes late for duty, and First Sergeant Petty is furious. Petty berates Ozzie in front of other soldiers, repeatedly calling him “boy” (186). As punishment, Petty confines Ozzie to the base indefinitely.

That day, Ozzie receives a letter from Rita asking for $35 for her college tuition. Feeling overwhelmed by his situation with Jelka, his punishment, and Rita’s request, Ozzie fights back tears, recalling his father’s admonition that men do not cry.

Ozzie is confined to base for six straight weekends. During this time, he stops drinking entirely. When his punishment finally ends in late February, he goes to see Jelka at the club. They embrace, and Ozzie realizes how much he has missed physical affection. He orders a club soda, having resolved to quit alcohol. They go to the rooming house for the night and are intimate.

Afterward, as Ozzie strokes Jelka’s still-flat belly, she expresses her fear for their biracial child in Germany and suggests he should take her to America when he returns. Ozzie tells her America treats him worse than Germany does. As Jelka falls asleep, Ozzie lies awake, hearing a child cry for his father in his mind.

In August 1951, Ethel is at a playground with her four children and her friend, Julia, who has a newborn. Ethel tells Julia about the slow progress in finding adoptive homes for the biracial children in the orphanages. While she has identified 14 willing American families, German and American bureaucracy could delay placements for up to a year. She estimates there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of biracial children in orphanages across Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, and Stuttgart who need homes.

Julia suggests that Ethel, a former journalist who once interviewed Thurgood Marshall, should use her writing skills to publicize the issue. Inspired, Ethel immediately takes out her journal and starts brainstorming. She conceives of writing a step-by-step guide for American families on how to adopt children from Germany. She plans to tell individual stories of the children to humanize them for readers and send the article to newspapers like the Baltimore Afro-American and the Pittsburgh Courier.

Ethel writes the date, August 23, 1951, at the top of her page and titles her project “The Brown Baby Plan” (193).

By June 1949, Jelka is visibly pregnant and has been fired from her job. Ozzie supports her financially, which means sending less money home to his mother and depleting his savings. He had already given most of his savings to Rita for her tuition. He has stopped drinking and partying but plays craps on base to supplement his income.

In September, a young girl arrives at the base gate with a message that Jelka has had the baby. Ozzie’s friend, Satchel, covers for him so he can leave his post. The girl—Jelka’s sister, Jutta—leads him on a long walk to Jelka’s family home, which he has never seen before.

He enters the small cottage and finds Jelka on the sofa with their newborn daughter. Ozzie holds Katja and feels an overwhelming swell of love and pride, noticing she has his family’s wide nose. Though she appears pale, he sees a tinge of brown on the tips of her ears. He meets Jelka’s mother, who accepts his gift of coffee. Jelka’s father wears dark aviator sunglasses indoors and compulsively kicks a table without acknowledging Ozzie.

Jelka’s parents argue with her in German before storming out of the house. Jelka explains they are embarrassed by the child born out of wedlock. She begs Ozzie to get them out of Germany, fearing no one will be kind to Katja because of her biracial heritage. Moved by a powerful desire to protect his daughter, Ozzie proposes. Jelka breaks down crying and confesses that she is already married.