Review: Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall by Nina Willner

Title: Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall
Author: Nina Willner
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication Date: October 4, 2016
Edition: ebook (416 pages)
Genres:

• Nonfiction
• Biography
• Germany
• History
• Memoir

Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall by Nina Willner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Nina Willner chronicles her family's story of their separation by the Iron Curtain that lasted forty years. As a little girl she wondered about her grandparents and why they couldn't be with her on Grandparents Day. When she question her parents, she learned that her mother had escaped from Eat Germany, but her grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins were still there, behind the Iron Curtain. Despite this, the family kept in touch. And this is their story.

I cried my way through this awesome book. I, like so many others, watched the TV coverage, in November 1989, when the wall came down and reunited Germany. But I didn't think of it in terms of family reunification. It was about freedom and freedom of people oppressed for decades under communist rule.

This book illustrates the triumph of the human spirit and its longing for freedom. I highly recommend it.