Summer of My German Soldier

Patty is on the road back in Arkansas on the way to reform school. The officer stops off at a restaurant to eat, even though he is not supposed to stop with any prisoners. Patty tries to explain to him how her lawyer told her that what was important to her, such as Anton’s goodness, was irrelevant to her legal case. The lawyer told Patty that she had embarrassed Jews everywhere. She and the officer pull into the Arkansas Reformatory for Girls after dark, where all the windows are covered with wire screening to keep the girls in.

Patty wakes up in the reform school, imagining options for herself after she gets out, as she does not want to go back to her parents’ house. Her hands are chapped from doing laundry. She imagines calling on Anton’s mother in Europe and being invited to stay with the family in their large house.

It is a Sunday. After breakfast many of the girls go to chapel, but there are no Jewish services in the reform school. The first Sunday that Patty was in the school, she was told that the services were non-denominational, but the minister spent the entire sermon describing how Jews killed Jesus.