The Berlin Letters by Katherine Reay (Austenprose PR Book Tour)

 

Title:  The Berlin Letters

Author:  Katherine Reay

Narrated by:  Saskia Maaleveld, Anne Marie Gideon, P.J. Ochlan

Publisher: Harper Muse

Length: Approximately 11 hours and 48 minutes

Source: Audiobook review copy from NetGalley.  Thank-you Harper Muse and Austenprose for the review copy of the physical book.

Do you like to send or receive letters? I love to send letters. My best friend and I still write letters to each other, although sometimes I am slow on getting my letters out!

The Berlin Letters is a compelling novel about the Cold War. In 1961, as the Berlin wall was going up, Monica Voekler threw her young daughter Luisa over the barbed wire to her parents on the west side. She was unable to cross herself. Luisa grew up in America, believing that that her parents died in a car accident. She works at the CIA cracking codes in secret. After her grandfather’s death, she finds a secret stash of letters from her father. Reading them, she discovers that her grandfather and father had been sending each other coded letters. Her father is still alive, and she will stop at nothing to rescue him.

My thoughts on this novel:

·       The first chapter was gripping and pulled me right into the novel. I never thought about how sudden the wall went up and how families could be separated forever. 

·       This was a page turner and I kept wanting to read/listen to this book to find out how it would all end.

·       The story kept me engaged throughout.  I liked the narrative with the chapters alternating between Luisa in the present, and Haris (her father) in the past leading up to the present (1989).

·       This story had everything – mystery, suspense, family drama, codes to crack, spies and even a bit of romance.

·       The characters were all compelling and I particularly identified with Luisa and her story.

·       I thought it was remarkably interesting to read about how the communists were very unhappy when John Paul II became the pope as they had spies in the Vatican before that time. 

·       Also interesting was a tidbit that the Soviet Union was on the verge of invading Poland until President Reagen was shot and the United States put itself on alert. The Soviets decided to back down at that point.

·       I always find it so strange how different east and west Berlin were from each other.  Haris has a time where he is walking the streets looking at buildings that were bombed out during World War II and how they still are not repaired after almost forty years.  He thinks about how there are certain areas that tourists are allowed and how they are kept looking nice.

·       Speaking of the present, I was a child of the eighties and felt old remembering the events of 1989 and 1990 in this historical fiction novel.

·       As I have been doing with a lot of books this month, I started this one as a physical book and then switched to the audiobook as I have had a lot of driving time to listen to audiobooks.  I really liked the different narrators in this book to narrate. I especially liked P.J. Ochlan’s accent as Haris Voekler.

·       I enjoyed the author’s note at the end of the novel that detailed her research into this time period.

·       There are also terrific book club discussion questions at the end of the book.  I think this would provide a book club plenty of good tidbits to discuss at a group meeting.

·       I would love to see this book made into a movie.

Overall, The Berlin Letters is a fascinating historical fiction book on the Cold War.  The story of father and daughter, Haris and Luisa put a face on the heartbreak that so many people had to endure during that time period.

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Bestselling author Katherine Reay returns with an unforgettable tale of the Cold War and a CIA code breaker who risks everything to free her father from an East German prison.

From 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.

AUTHOR BIO

Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author who has enjoyed a lifelong affair with books. She publishes both fiction and nonfiction, holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University, and currently lives outside Chicago, Illinois, with her husband and three children. You can meet her at katherinereay.com.