Gerald Sanderson sends a letter to Jayson Jones concerning a discovered diary from Nazi-era Germany written by an African American who was living abroad as a jazz pianist. During the rise of the Nazi party, Clifford Pepperidge was arrested because of his homosexuality and sent to a concentration camp in Dachau in southern Germany. The letter to Jones is a request to read the diary to determine if it is publishable. He quickly determines the diary would make a beautiful publication, but he worries about the demand for such a book, since most people are unfamiliar with the stories of black people in Nazi concentration camps.
The diary is a hob-glob of whatever random writing materials the musician could find. He tells in the diary about his life. He is a musician and servant to a large estate. He has lived in Dachau long enough to see the rise of the Nazi party and the construction of the concentration camp in town. Meanwhile, he describes the way he lived; as a frequent pianist in a local jazz group, Pepperidge is able to make new friends often and easily, and he finds himself in a crowd of homosexuals, like himself. He indulges with that community but is discovered by the police and imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp.
Pepperidge describes the Twilight Zone-type confusion that arises next. Dachau is the first concentration camp, so the earth has never seen what Pepperidge is now seeing. He is imprisoned there only two months into the camp's existence. He is plagued by SS officer Dieter Lange who was a pimp and gangster by trade before giving his life to the Nazi party. The SS officer consults with the building of new concentration camps. The officer gives Pepperidge some leniency and employs him as his personal slave in the camp, and he passes the years of WWII this way. As the diary comes to a jarring end, the officers realize that they are probably doomed for their atrocities, and they try to warm up to the prisoners, suspecting that they will soon be witnesses in Nazi war crime trials.
