The first part of the Prologue is told in third person from the perspective of the Huntress in the Fall of 1945. In Altaussee, Austria, the Huntress worries that she may face trial at the end of the Second World War, like the Nazis with whom she is involved. She vows to escape before she is caught.

The second part of the prologue is a meditation by the British journalist Ian Graham in April 1946 on the “Huntress,” the mistress of a Nazi SS officer in Poland who murdered Jews, Allied soldiers, and children like it was a sport. Ian wonders whether the “small fish” (4) like her will escape the Nuremberg trials for Nazi war criminals. 

In 1946, Jordan McBride is a 17-year-old Bostonian who lives with her widowed father, an antiques dealer named Daniel. Jordan wants to go to college and study photography, but her father prefers that she marry her high-school boyfriend, Garrett Byrne. Meanwhile, Daniel is dating a quiet Austrian widow named Anneliese Weber who has a four-year-old daughter named Ruth.

At dinner, Jordan takes a picture of Anneliese.