The story focuses on the friendship between a young Jewish-American girl and an escaped German POW in a small town in the Southern United States during World War II.

The story is told in first person narrative by Patricia Anne Bergen, a 12-year-old Jewish girl living in Jenkinsville, Arkansas near the end of World War II.

When a group of German POWs visits her father's department store, Patricia meets Fredrick Anton Reiker, a rifleman who comes from Göttingen, but is half-English.

In return, she protects Anton by hiding him above her father's garage, telling only her family's African-American maid, Ruth Hughes.

Anton is almost exposed when he sees Patty's father beating her one day and runs out of hiding to protect her, but she shouts for him to go back before he is seen.

In the film version, the town of Jenkinsville is set in the state of Georgia, not Arkansas, and Patty does not stand trial for treason or is sent to reform school but is judged to be a juvenile delinquent and remanded into her parents custody until she is 18.