Content Warning: The source material and this section of the guide discuss war-related trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The source material uses the outdated term “shellshock” to refer to PTSD and also contains offensive and racist language.

Irene Woodward is the novel’s protagonist. She is a dynamic, round character. Irene comes from a wealthy New York family who wants her to marry well so that she can continue the Woodward name. However, Irene refuses to marry her fiancé after he hits her. She instead chooses to join the Red Cross and becomes a member of the Clubmobile Service, bringing coffee, doughnuts, and companionship to the soldiers on the front lines in World War II. Irene is imaginative, dramatic, and adventurous. She believes that joining the war effort will prove to her family that she can contribute something meaningful to the world. Irene uses her imagination to process what she sees in the war, finding a form of escape in her journals, sketchbooks, and letter-writing so that she does not have to face the full gravity of the events around her. When she and her comrade, Dorothy, arrive in Germany, she cannot understand how a country that is so beautiful can create so much evil.