Publication Date: March 5, 2024
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.
Luisa Voekler specializes in deciphering Soviet codes spanning 1939 to 1945, decades after the Cold War. She never imagined the old documents she translated would contain clues to her own past.
Author Katherine Reay delivers an impactful historical fiction novel featuring events surrounding the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Letters captures the anguish of families suddenly separated by a fence overnight.
Through the coded letters sent to her grandfather by her father, Luisa learns how her family was separated. Discovering her father is alive in a German prison serves as a catalyst for Luisa to risk everything to set him free.
Watching the story unfold through her father’s letters, particularly since Luisa never knew about it, evokes powerful emotions. It provides a sobering look at the impact of the Wall during its 28-year existence.
The Berlin Letters delves into the aftermath of World War II in Germany and delivers a fantastic slice of historical fiction.
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.
