Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene

First published: 1973

Type of work: Psychologocal realism

Themes: Family, friendship, race and ethnicity, and war

Time of work: The early 1940’s

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: Jenkinsville, Arkansas

Principal Characters:

• Patty Bergen, a talkative, friendly twelve-year-old Jew, who helps a German soldier
• Anton Reiker, the young German soldier who helps Patty realize how special she is
• Ruth Hughes, the Bergens’ black maid, one of Patty’s only friends
• Harry Bergen, Patty’s father, who owns a department store and mistreats his older daughter
• Pearl Bergen, Patty’s mother, who wants a cute, popular daughter
• Sharon Bergen, Patty’s six-year-old sister, who is winsome and popular

The Story

Patty Bergen, the Jewish heroine of Summer of My German Soldier, lives with parents who favor her sister, Sharon, and find fault with her. Mrs. Bergen criticizes Patty’s wavy auburn hair and forces her to undergo a permanent wave, which frizzles her daughter’s best claim to beauty. The hot-tempered Mr. Bergen, who fears poverty and works nervously to make his department store in Jenkinsville, Arkansas, prosper, beats Patty for accidentally breaking a car window and associating with a poverty-stricken boy, Freddy Dowd.

Patty’s story resembles “Cinderella.” In her father’s department store, Patty meets and instantly recognizes as her Prince Charming Anton Reiker, a German prisoner of war. When Anton escapes from camp near Jenkinsville, Patty hides him in a garage apartment behind her parents’ house. Forced to decide between her father and Anton, Patty chooses Anton, and expresses her decision by giving him the expensive blue shirt she had given to her unappreciative parent on Father’s Day. In turn, the soldier leaves Patty his grandfather’s gold ring, his most valued possession, to show how much he cares. Both the ring and the shirt, which bears the initials “H. B.,” help the Federal Bureau of Investigation discover that Patty has helped him.

Ruth, the black maid, serves as Patty’s fairy godmother. At first she encourages Patty to be sweet, neat, and well dressed, in the hope of pleasing her parents. When Ruth discovers Anton, who comes out of hiding while Mr. Bergen is beating Patty, she feeds him breakfast; however, she also encourages him to leave. From the beginning of the story, Ruth recognizes both Patty’s need for compassion and the love that exists between Patty and Anton. By the end of the book, Anton has been killed in New York, and Patty has been sent to reform school. Patty’s parents do not visit her, and when Ruth rides the bus there one Sunday, she tells the girl that her parents are “irregular seconds folks,” not worth the high price Patty has been paying for them. Although Patty cannot marry her prince, she hopes to find his family in Germany when the war ends. With Ruth’s help, she glimpses the strength required to make such a journey.

The forces of good and evil are represented by those who help Patty and those who mistreat her, although a few characters are indifferent toward her. Her mother’s parents support her, her grandfather by praising her intelligence and her grandmother by buying her books and clothes. A reporter from Memphis introduces her to journalism, stands by her during the trial, and sends her a gift subscription to the Memphis Commercial Appeal when she is in reform school. The Jenkinsville sheriff refuses to let her father take away her gold ring, and the man who drives her to reform school stops to buy her a hamburger and a piece of pie, even though he is breaking a rule. In contrast to these friendly characters is Patty’s Memphis lawyer, who tells her that she has embarrassed all Jews and caused their loyalty to be questioned. Also depicted as evil is the reform-school supervisor, who calls Patty greedy and spoiled and refuses to let Ruth stay longer than thirty minutes. These good and evil characters either help or harm Patty in her quest for love.

Context

In Summer of My German Soldier, which received three book awards in 1973 and was made into a television film in the late 1970’s, Bette Greene has created a female Huckleberry Finn. Patty and Ruth are friends in some of the same ways as are Huck and the Negro Jim. Yet Greene blends her criticism of society with her story of friendship more smoothly than Mark Twain does in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). The Cinderella tale of Patty’s growth in some ways parallels that of Huck, although Patty becomes involved in thoughts of romance, which Huck scorns. Huck searches for his ideals among unspoiled nature, away from “civilization,” but Patty looks toward Europe for her ideal society.

In her next book about Patty, Morning Is a Long Time Coming (1978), Greene shows Patty at age eighteen, traveling to Germany to look for Anton’s family. In Them That Glitter and Them That Don’t (1983), the author again depicts realistically some of the tensions and problems that mid-twentieth century young people experience. Greene uses concrete details and believable dialogue in these books also.

Patty is as intelligent, determined, and outspoken as the heroine of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847). Her curiosity and developing maturity can be compared to that of the main character in Anne Frank’s Het achterhuis (1947; The Diary of a Young Girl, 1952). Patty’s defiance of the laws of her family and country brings to mind the Greek heroine Antigone, in Sophocles’ play by the same name.

Greene has combined the simplicity of the moral tale with the sophistication of psychological analysis and social criticism. She has also woven a seamless story that contains both realism and optimism. Summer of My German Soldier shows that love between members of different races and cultures can exist in spite of society’s sicknesses, and can perhaps help cure some of them.