The Berlin Letters by Katherine Reay

 

rom the time she was a young girl, Luisa Voekler has loved solving puzzles and cracking codes. Brilliant and logical, she’s expected to quickly climb the career ladder at the CIA. But while her coworkers have moved on to thrilling Cold War assignments—especially in the exhilarating era of the late 1980s—Luisa’s work remains stuck in the past decoding messages from World War II.

Journalist Haris Voekler grew up a proud East Berliner. But as his eyes open to the realities of postwar East Germany, he realizes that the Soviet promises of a better future are not coming to fruition. After the Berlin Wall goes up, Haris finds himself separated from his young daughter and all alone after his wife dies. There’s only one way to reach his family—by sending coded letters to his father-in-law who lives on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

When Luisa Voekler discovers a secret cache of letters written by the father she has long presumed dead, she learns the truth about her grandfather’s work, her father’s identity, and why she has never progressed in her career. With little more than a rudimentary plan and hope, she journeys to Berlin and risks everything to free her father and get him out of East Berlin alive.

As Luisa and Haris take turns telling their stories, events speed toward one of the twentieth century’s most dramatic moments—the fall of the Berlin Wall and that night’s promise of freedom, truth, and reconciliation for those who lived, for twenty-eight years, behind the bleak shadow of the Iron Curtain’s most iconic symbol.

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About The Author

 

Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author of several novels and one work of nonfiction.

For her fiction, Katherine writes love letters to books, and her novels are saturated with what she calls the “world of books.” They are character driven stories that examine the past as a way to find one’s best way forward. In the words of The Bronte Plot’s Lucy Alling, Katherine writes of “that time when you don’t know where you’ll be, but you can’t stay as you are.”

Katherine holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University, and after several moves across the globe, lives outside Chicago.

Please visit Katherine on social media, on FB at Katherinereaybooks, Instagram @katherinereay, or visit her website at www.katherinereay.com

 

My Review

I know people who lived under this wall, and things were hard if you were on the wrong side! Loved Reagan's speech to Gorbachev!
This read has it all, such love and sacrifice, only to break ones heart and will to live. While others thrive, some pretend to be friends, so sad, and they do this right to the end.
This is a story of survival, and great love! Luisa is brought up in Washington D.C., when her Grandfather dies she learns that her father is still alive and behind that wall.
What a journey we begin and the sacrifices made to go to Germany and rescue her father! We travel with her with our hearts in our throat!
Keep reading the author's notes are great!
I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Harper Muse, and was not required to give a positive review.