Girl in the Blue Coat

Content warning: The guide contains discussions of antisemitism, the Holocaust, starvation, and violence that appear in the source text.

The narrator, Hanneke, remembers the first time her deceased boyfriend, Sebastian (Bas) Van de Kamp, told her he loved her: “It’s your fault […] Because you’re lovable” (1). She regrets not saying “I love you” back and remarks that she would have if she’d known all she “would find out about love and war” (2). She blames herself for failing to tell him her true feelings at that moment.

Chapter 1 begins on a Tuesday in January 1943. Hanneke Bakker encounters a soldier and writes that she stops because “the soldier’s face is young and pretty,” and he might make a good romantic prospect (5). But she quickly amends her statement, writing “that’s a lie” (5). She explains that she prefers to pretend she has a choice than to acknowledge her reality: As a citizen of Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, she has to stop for soldiers. She then flirts with the soldier to distract him from the illicit goods in her bicycle basket. Hanneke explains that while “most would say [she trades] in the black market,” she thinks of herself “as a finder” (8).