Summer of My German Soldier is a book by Bette Greene first published in 1973.
The story is told in first person narrative by a twelve-year-old Jewish girl named Patty Bergen living in Jenkinsville, Arkansas during World War II. The story focuses on the friendship between Patty and an escaped German POW named Anton. Patty first meets Anton when a group of German POWs visits her father's store. Anton teaches Patty that she is a person of value. In return, she protects Anton by hiding him above her father's garage.
The book was followed by a sequel, Morning Is a Long Time Coming.
Read more about Summer Of My German Soldier: Themes, Adaptations, Reception
Famous quotes containing the words summer, german and/or soldier:
“To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—
True Poems flee—”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“Frankly, I do not like the idea of conversations to define the term “unconditional surrender.” ... The German people can have dinned into their ears what I said in my Christmas Eve speech—in effect, that we have no thought of destroying the German people and that we want them to live through the generations like other European peoples on condition, of course, that they get rid of their present philosophy of conquest.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)