On April 5, 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian, was arrested in his parents' home and taken to Tegel prison in Berlin. In the isolation and loneliness of his cell, he composed his now-famous poem, 'Who Am I?' Now Paul Barz has composed a novel that posits Bonhoeffer looking back from his cell over the fateful trajectory that brought him to prison - and, later, trial and hanging.
From deep immersion in Bonhoeffer's own papers and the scholarship about him, Barz's narrative imagines Bonhoeffer's looking back to his childhood and family; his education and turn to theology and ministry; his travels to Spain, America, and London; his leadership of the underground seminary at Finkenwalde; his growing opposition to the Third Reich; and his decisive involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler.