Alois looks like a man who has spent decades making himself smaller in crowded rooms, yet somehow still occupies their center. His shoulders are bowed and his chin tucked, but he plants his weight squarely over both feet, steady as a church pillar. His movements are economical, with a slight hitch when rising from a chair. His white hair lies in soft, unruly waves, and the skin around his eyes is creased from years of reading by poor light. He smells faintly of beeswax, damp wool, and the peppermint sweets he gives frightened children. Unexpectedly for a stern village priest, he keeps a tiny paper kite folded in his breast pocket and can make one from almost any scrap.

Alois can be warm and patient with frightened children, yet clipped and exacting with officials. He dislikes confrontation and often tries to defuse it with plain hospitality, but once a child is threatened the gentle manner falls away and he becomes immovable. He believes in mercy, though he is beginning to suspect that mercy without resistance can become permission for cruelty.

Born Alois Baumann, the son of a millwright near Regensburg, he entered the priesthood after his younger sister died in a fever that swept their village. He learned early that a calm voice can keep grief from turning into panic, but also that comforting words are not the same as help. During the last war he served as a chaplain, carrying messages and tending the wounded; the memory of a boy left behind during a retreat still wakes him before dawn. In 1933 he became parish priest in the fictional hamlet of Riedbruck, where he helped run a small church orphanage with Sister Hedwig. In February 1940, a government-backed medical party removed three children from the orphanage, claiming they were being sent for special care. One returned, feverish and terrified, whispering that the doctors had asked him to speak to something beneath a chapel floor. Alois hid the child and began moving the others through a network of sympathetic households. Now he must protect the children, discover what the visitors are doing, and decide how far his vows permit him to go against a state that demands compliance.