Anton is the sole survivor when his family is massacred by Nazi forces during the winter of 1945. He and his family lived on a quay in Haarlem, Netherlands. During the winter of 1945, Anton is twelve years old, and the city is under Nazi occupation. When a Nazi official named Fake Ploeg is assassinated in front of his neighbor’s home by Underground Resistance fighters, those neighbors (named the Kortewegs) drag Ploeg’s body so that it lies in front of Anton’s home. As a result, the Nazis burn down the Steenwijk home and summarily execute Anton’s older brother and his parents. Anton is incarcerated and then released into the custody of his uncle. For the rest of his life, he grapples with the immense violence and trauma that he suffered on that night. He grows into “a tall, slender man” (185) with a propensity to toss his hair across his forehead. He makes it through his schooling as a proficient but unremarkable student, and eventually becomes an anesthesiologist. He also marries a woman named Saskia De Graaf, with whom he has a daughter named Sandra. He later divorces Saskia and marries a woman named Liesbeth, with whom he has a son.