The narrative shifts to Summer 1938 in Badensburg, Germany. During a picnic with friends, 17-year-old Allina Strauss is shocked by the behavior of Fritz, the volatile fiancé of her best friend Karin. When Karin admits she misses a Jewish couple, the Neumanns, who vanished from the village six months earlier, Fritz launches into a Nazi tirade, repeating slurs absorbed from mandatory race education classes. When he degrades Frau Neumann, a woman who once helped Allina’s family, Allina’s boyfriend, Albert, grips her arm as a silent warning to stay quiet. However, Allina snaps, accusing Fritz of mindlessly repeating nonsense. The two men nearly come to blows before Karin’s tearful plea defuses the confrontation. Albert pulls Allina away and scolds her, telling her she must stop defending Jewish friends around Fritz—not because he disagrees with her, but because he fears for her safety. He admits he knows the Neumanns are currently safe, then makes Allina promise to be more careful, particularly after he leaves for Berlin.

The next morning, Allina’s Uncle Dieter informs her that Fritz’s father visited to report the argument, warning that Fritz is a member of the Hitler Youth Patrol and that Allina risks arrest. Aunt Claudia steers Allina into the kitchen and tells her that while the family privately sympathizes with their Jewish neighbors, expressing that sympathy openly is dangerous. She urges Allina to learn when to speak and when to stay quiet. Allina reluctantly agrees.

Passing through the hallway afterward, Allina pauses at the only photograph she has of her parents, Tomas and Irene Schenck—Berliners who died when she was three months old. Her aunt and uncle have never said more than that, despite her years of pleading. She reflects that there are “too many secrets” in the house (21).

Albert leaves for Berlin the week after Karin and Fritz’s wedding. When he visits Badensburg in July for Allina’s 18th birthday, she accepts his marriage proposal. His letters afterward are oddly vague, filled with memories and plans for the future but no real news from Berlin.

Allina drifts apart from her school friends, seeing only Karin for weekly lunches—visits that feel increasingly distant, as the two avoid any mention of Fritz or politics by unspoken agreement. She channels her restlessness into helping Uncle Dieter run his bookshop, where they discuss classic literature but no longer debate politics, as books by Jewish authors have been stripped from the shelves following the Nazi book burnings.

At the end of July, Uncle Dieter develops a persistent, worsening cough. He refuses to see a doctor, insisting it is nothing and that tourist season is too busy to close the shop. In late August, he coughs up blood. The following week, the diagnosis confirms terminal cancer, with nothing to be done. He tells Allina he wants his remaining time at home with his family. Allina and Aunt Claudia settle into a joint routine of caring for Dieter.

In the fall of 1938, a pregnant Karin visits daily to help with cooking and chores as Uncle Dieter’s condition deteriorates. Allina is increasingly worried about Albert, who has not written or come home despite knowing how ill Uncle Dieter is. One afternoon, Uncle Dieter collapses on the landing. While Karin fetches Dr. Weiss, Allina waits on the floor with him and Aunt Claudia. When the doctor examines Uncle Dieter, the severity of his weight loss—masked until now by layered clothing—shocks Allina. Dr. Weiss takes Allina aside and tells her plainly that the end is near, instructing them to move his bed to the parlor for easier care.

On a good day not long after, Uncle Dieter tells Allina it is time to discuss her parents. He retrieves a box and asks her to read aloud a letter from her father, Tomas Schenck, written in 1919, describing how he landed a job at the Berlin newspaper Tageblatt. A second letter, from 1920, delivers a shock: Allina’s mother, Irene Schenck, was Jewish. Tomas writes that they planned to raise Allina as a Lutheran out of fear of rising antisemitism and intended to return to Badensburg by Christmas. Uncle Dieter reveals they never arrived—Tomas and Irene died in an omnibus crash three months later, and Irene’s parents brought infant Allina to live with him and Claudia for her safety.

Dieter then reveals that Allina’s official birth certificate is a forgery; under Nazi law, her Jewish mother makes her a “Mischling,” a designation that has already cost people their jobs and education. He hands her forged papers identifying her as Allina Gottlieb. Dieter urges Allina to use the documents, arranged the previous year by Albert through a clandestine contact, if she is ever forced to flee. Uncle Dieter discloses that Albert’s real work is done after hours, helping Jews facing imminent expulsion find safety, which is why he has not come home.

Allina is furious that both Albert and her uncle kept this from her. Uncle Dieter confirms that the Neumanns were safely moved to Dragør, gives Allina the box as her inheritance, tells her he loves her, and falls asleep. She runs from the room clutching the box.

The day after Uncle Dieter’s death, Allina is consumed by grief and guilt for not telling him she loved him before he died. Aunt Claudia gently defends their secrecy over their niece’s origins but notes that Albert wanted them to tell Allina the truth.

As Allina presses and irons Uncle Dieter’s burial suit, Aunt Claudia reappears with a note delivered by a stranger who fled upon learning Dieter was dead. The note, addressed to her uncle, warns that expulsion plans are being accelerated and asks about a contact connected to Albert’s network. Aunt Claudia panics, admitting Dieter never shared the operational details of his work with her. Allina tells her they must burn the note at once and asks whether there are other sensitive papers in his desk that need to be destroyed. Aunt Claudia agrees to handle it immediately. She tells Allina that whatever lies ahead, they will face it together.

Two nights after Uncle Dieter’s death, Allina wakes to gunshots and screaming. She runs downstairs and finds Aunt Claudia shot dead on the front porch. A nearby barn is engulfed in fire, and bodies lie in the street. Her neighbor Frau Becker spots Allina and shouts at her to run. Allina flees into the forest and hides, but soldiers find her, drag her out, beat her, and tear off her nightgown. Before they can rape her, a whistle calls them to the town square. One soldier throws her over his shoulder; she vomits on him and loses consciousness.

Allina comes to in the town square, lying naked on a mound of her neighbors’ corpses. An SS officer—Gruppenführer Gud—orders Allina to stand, demands her name. On hearing her forged name, Allina Gottlieb, he remarks that she resembles his granddaughter. Giving Allina a coat to cover herself, he orders a young soldier named Voss to escort her home to bathe and pack, with strict instructions that no one is to touch her.

At home, Allina sews her father’s letters and articles into the lining of her gray wool coat, packs the forged documents, and destroys all papers bearing her real name. Returning to the square, she finds Gud eating a lavish meal at a café table with his back to piles of bodies. He tells her that her old life is over and that she must choose to live. A doctor stitches the wound on Allina’s head, and Gud orders her into his car. She falls asleep as they leave Badensburg—and wakes to Gud raping her in the back seat. She fights back before he overpowers her. Allina dissociates from the assault before losing consciousness. She is roused by Gud announcing they have arrived.

The narrative returns to June 2006 in Allina’s living room. Allina has spent nearly an hour recounting the massacre in Badensburg and Gud’s assault in a halting voice, while Katrine listened without interrupting. Overwhelmed by grief for the young woman her mother once was, Katrine holds Allina for the first time. Allina explains that after the war, surviving in America as a German required her to completely sever ties with Germany; the hostility their family faced in Englewood made that the only viable path to giving Katrine a better life.

Though full of questions about their Jewish heritage, Albert, and her father’s identity, Katrine holds back and asks only what happened next. Allina takes a postcard from the box showing a building identified on the back as Die Mutterhäuser des Lebensborn. Gud, she tells Katrine, took her to Hochland Home near Munich—a home whose purpose was to produce babies for the state.