The Storyteller (Picoult novel)

Josef is seen by many in their town as a model citizen, as he was the long time German teacher at the high school, as well as the baseball coach.

Over time Sage is able to gather bits and pieces of information (photographs, dates, people, places, documents) from Josef and she gives it to Leo.

Minka tells of her time in Poland as a teenager, moving into a ghetto, and then being imprisoned at Auschwitz, as well as how she ultimately survived.

However, an SS guard, known as Franz Hartmann, expressed interest in the story as he believed that it explained the complex relationship he had with his brother.

Franz offers Minka small comforts such as warmth and food scraps in exchange for 10 pages of the story each day.

With Leo and Sage returning the following day with photographs of Nazi generals, Minka is able to positively identify one of the guards as Reiner Hartmann, stating "I would never forget the man that murdered my best friend".

This confession deeply upsets Sage, and having obtained the material she needed, she immediately leaves Josef's house.

At Minka's wake, Sage is overwhelmed by the number of people present, so Leo takes her away to a hotel, where the two of them become intimate and enter into a relationship.

Josef further confesses to Sage that the worst crime he ever committed was not Darija's murder, but watching his brother choke to death in front of him and choosing not to save him.

Once Sage returns home, she discovers that the hospital wristband Josef was wearing states his blood type as B+, although Reiner's was known to be AB.

Sage realizes that Josef Weber was not Reiner Hartmann, but his younger brother Franz, and that she killed a man who was not who she thought he was.

Picoult often employs this alternating narrative style throughout her novels, including in, My Sister's Keeper, House Rules, Change of Heart, Songs of the Humpback Whale, Sing You Home, Handle with Care, and Lone Wolf.

Moms for Liberty demanded the removal following the 2022 passage of the Stop WOKE Act, supported and signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.