West of the Wall - Marcia Preston

I love reading a book that makes me want to find out more about a time and a place - and this is such a book. It is a story of a city divided in two by the building of a wall that physically separates families and friends, of the suffering and despair of East Berliners under strict communist occupation and the desperate choices one woman has to make. Set initially in the early 1960's we are introduced to Trudy and Rolf Hulst. Following the building of the Berlin Wall young Rolf becomes a political dissident running an underground organisation helping people to escape to the west. Eventually ... more

Left behind in East Berlin with their young son,Stefan, Trudy Hulst waits for news from her husband Rolf after he makes his escape over the Berlin Wall into the western sector of the divided city. However, before she gets word from Rolf she is paid a visit by Wolfgang, an old friend of the coupe, now a member of the 'Volkspolizei'. He tels her in confidence that as the wife of a defector she will soon come under the watchful eye of the Stasi - the state security police - and she'll probably be imprisoned. Trudy makes the difficult decision to leave Stefan behind with her mother-in-law while ... more

I borrowed West of the Wall by Marcia Preston from our local library, after reading a review on Dooyoo, which inspired me to seek it out. I have always been fascinated by Eastern Europe and this novel is set in Berlin, just after the Wall divides the East and West. I spent three weeks in East Berlin in 1989, just a few months before the Wall came down, so I was looking forward to immersing myself in the 1960s and to get a feeling of life then in this city. The novel began really well. I was soon caught up in the absorbing story. It centres on a woman called Trudy Hulst, who is the wife of a ... more