The German Wife

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness and religious discrimination.

The judge takes the land in payment of Henry’s loan. After selling everything they can, Henry and Lizzie leave the farm and go to El Paso. Henry plans to join the Civilian Conservation Corps to get a job and support them, but they stay in a single room at a boarding house for two weeks until they run out of money. Henry and Lizzie go door to door daily looking for work, barely getting by on the occasional odd job while living in an encampment of similarly unhoused people. One evening, Lizzie sees a maid come out of a hotel with the appearance of honest exhaustion, and she decides to try to get a job at the hotel.

Lizzie arrives at a restaurant to meet other American wives of the men working on Project Paperclip. They push her for information from Calvin about the German scientists and their families. Avril tells the women about the painted “Nazi” on the road in front of Sofie and Jürgen’s home, and she suggests that one of the scientists may have been in the SS. Lizzie refuses to confirm the rumor, but neither does she lie by denying it.