Patty Bergen

Patty Bergen is a 12 year-old Jewish girl who lives in Jenkinsville, Alabama. She is intelligent and curious, although she is also socially isolated and does not do well in school. Patty is dismissed, disapproved of, and emotionally and physically abused by her parents, who dote on her younger, prettier sister, Sharon. Patty has very little self-esteem, and will do almost anything to gain he approval of her parents, to no avail. She often tells lies to make herself feel important.

Patty’s grandparents love her, and do their best to show her love, but they live in Memphis, and have their own lives. Her only friends are her maid Ruth, Freddy the neighbor boy of whom her father disapproves, Charlene Madlee, a reporter for The Commercial Appeal and Anton, an escaped German soldier/American prisoner of war, who shows her that she is, indeed, an important person...