So Ania leaves home for the convent not because she wants to be a nun, but because she wants to go to Africa. The convent has a mission there, in the former Hapsburg colony of Namibia. She imagines herself teaching chubby native children how to read and boil their vegetables, and falling asleep under mosquito netting listening to monkeys’ cries. She hungers for an opportunity to see the wider world. And also to get out of Dortmund.

Ania does not ask her father what he thinks of her idea. She knows what his answer will be. For all his criticism of the current state of government, the Nazis and the Communists alike, Herr Doktor Fortzmann has never set foot outside Germany. It is his home, his Heimat, and, in his opinion, the only truly civilized nation on earth.

Since his wife’s death her father has become even more remote. At dinner they eat in silence, listening to the clink of their own cutlery. It makes her miss the days when he lectured her about the sins of the Communists, the glories of the kaiser, and his favorite German heroes—Hermann, Karl der Grosse, and General Bismarck. Even his patients are deserting him. The Nazis have opened a new hospital on the other side of town that provides free care for the factory’s workers. Herr Doktor Fortzmann locks himself in his study for whole afternoons, reading and scowling over the newspapers.

Meanwhile, the world beyond Ania’s stifled childhood home is blossoming. There is excitement in the air; it is a new day for Germany. The young Hitler—so handsome, so vibrant, and so unlike the tired old intellectuals who, for the past fifteen years, have muddled the nation through riots, unemployment, and political strife—has been named chancellor. The papers are full of his bold plans and ideas. He has the vision and energy to make Germany great. He has rounded up the Communists who burned down the Reichstag and averted the revolution so many Germans have feared for years. Even Herr Doktor Fortzmann gives him credit for this. And Frau Richter is an ardent supporter. Thank God for Herr Hitler, she says. He will save us from the Bolsheviks.

Under him, Germany is to be one nation rather than a collection of rivalrous factions sniping at one another in the face of defeat. Together, they will create the finest, strongest, and greatest civilization on earth! And Hitler says it is the young people who will accomplish this.

It would be death to stay locked up in the Fortzmann house.

On the day Ania leaves, Rainer Brandt waits for her on the corner. He is, what? Her friend? Her beau? Her unlikely confidant? There is no label that quite covers their relationship. She has known him since they were children. They have attended the same school and church. They have waited in the same lines for bread and gone to the same funerals and played at the same carnival games. His father, a bricklayer at the hospital, is a patient of Doktor Fortzmann’s. As children she and Rainer played backgammon in her father’s waiting room during old Herr Brandt’s weekly appointments.