Lucy Barton, the first-person narrator, introduces her first husband William Gerhardt, who is 71 at the time of writing. Although 63-year-old Lucy has since re-married and become widowed, she finds that she can grieve William in her bereavement too. Lucy and William are on amicable terms, with William calling Lucy “Button” and Lucy calling William “Pillie.”

William and his third wife, Estelle, have a 10-year-old daughter called Bridget, in addition to the two daughters he had with Lucy who are in their 30s. Although he has retired from teaching at a microbiology lab at New York University, he still has a laboratory and does research. William, who considers that he is aging well in comparison to his peers, “felt (almost) invulnerable” to misfortune (7). William’s calm exterior belies night terrors that relate to both his parents—his mother, Catherine, and his father Wilhelm, who was a German prisoner of war. William’s father met his mother when he was brought to Maine to pick potatoes as an interned prisoner. At that time, Catherine was married to a potato farmer, Clyde Trask. William is beset by guilt about his German heritage and the atrocities the Nazis committed in the war.