"A beautifully textured exploration of relationships between husbands and wives, parents and sons, friends and lovers. Love, in its harsh and dreadful facets, is portrayed as a powerful force, capable of fusing hearts but also of destroying them. . . . The taut drama of history, interlaced with the emotional sagas of these marvelously drawn figures, makes for a very satisfying narrative." Library Journal, starred review

From the author of City Below and Prince of Peace, a suspenseful drama of family and politics set in Cold War Berlin.

Missed signals, cloaked motives, false postures, and panicked responses echo tragically across borders and generations when, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a father and son recount the tense events of nearly thirty years before. In 1961, just before the Wall rises, three teenagers from an American school in West Germany travel to the Communist side of the divided city to join a rally. Unknown to them, their parents have unfinished business reaching back to World War II which will pull the teens into the vortex of an international incident.