← To the world of Lena Voss

Characters

Frau Petersen

Ninety-four, lived through the 1962 flood

Frau Petersen is ninety-four and lives at Haus Deichblick in Wilhelmsburg, in room three, on oxygen. Her bed is turned toward the window, and above it hangs a black-and-white photo: a young couple in front of a small car, both laughing. In 1962 she lost her house in Moorburg to the flood. Every February she tells the story, and every year she ends it with the same sentence. Anyone who visits her first sees the photo above the bed and the little radio at the foot of it.

First encounter

• First noticed: the photo above the bed and the little radio at the foot of it
• Speaks: a thin but perfectly clear voice; “It happened so fast, child.”
• Object: the black-and-white photo above the bed

Connected to

• Frau YildizDirector of nursing at Haus Deichblick in Wilhelmsburg
• Anna KesslerLower Elbe emergency manager who has known Lena thirteen years
• The Lower Elbe and the DikeThe land behind the dikes between Hamburg and the estuary

Spoiler-free. This describes the starting point of the book named, without its major twists or resolutions.