Bertie

Through the eyes and heart of the novel’s trans protagonist, Berthold “Bertie” Durchdenwald, we experience the news of Hitler’s takeover, which comes while he’s dancing with his girlfriend in a queer Berlin club.

“The world had changed overnight,” Bertie observes.

Heightening the contrast between the trans experience pre- and post-Hitler, Todd uses chapters alternating between Bertie’s beautiful Berlin life and his eked-out 1940s existence on the farm where he and Sofie hid under aliases throughout the war.

Soon after word of the war’s end reaches Bertie and Sofie, Bertie discovers an emaciated young man unconscious in the asparagus patch “in the dirtied stripes of a camp prisoner.”

Noting the black triangle sewed to the man’s uniform, the Nazis’ label for trans prisoners, Bertie realizes the man must have escaped from nearby Dachau.