Ein Paar, dessen Ehe an einem traumatischen Ereignis zerbricht. Ein Dorf, das in ein dunkles Geheimnis verstrickt ist. Und ein Sommer viele Jahre später, in dem eine junge Frau dem Rätsel dieses Dorfes auf die Spur kommt. In klarer, fast leuchtender Prosa entfaltet Tricia Wastvedt die Chronologie einer verdrängten Schuld, die zum Albtraum wird.
In 1947, Elisabeth Mander's German nephew comes to stay: Stefan Landau, her dead sister's teenage son, whom she hates and loves before she's even set eyes on him. Orphaned by the war and traumatised by the last, vicious battles of the Hitler Youth, Stefan brings with him to England only a few meagre possessions. Among them a portrait of a girl with long copper hair by a young painter called Michael Ross - and with it the memory, both painful and precious, of her life and that time between the wars. Spanning decades and generations, The German Boy tells the moving story of two families entangled by love and friendship, divided by prejudice and war, and of a brief encounter between a woman and a man that touched each of their lives forever.