Summary

In the Prologue, the elderly narrator sneaks out of her Paris nursing home to visit the circus history exhibit, Two Hundred Years of Circus Magic. There, she finds the train car where she and others lived for months many years ago. She hopes it will answer questions in her mind.

In Chapter 1, the novel shifts back in time to Bensheim, Germany in the year 1944. The narrator, sixteen year-old Noa Weil, works at the Bensheim station as a janitor, and is allowed to stay there as well. The small town station has become a waystation for German military trains. Noa, who is Dutch, blonde, and beautiful, cannot help but recall becoming pregnant by a German soldier, being thrown out by her parents for this, and being accepted into the Lebensborn Program. She painfully recalls giving birth to a baby boy who was not considered...