"Nonstop action, real history, serious danger. You gotta read these books!" —Alan Gratz, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Refugee

December, 1961Marta is a young girl who saw thirty miles of barbed wire appear across her city overnight, separating Berlin into West and East -- with Marta’s home on the Communist Bloc-controlled eastern side.

January, 1989 Now a spray-painted concrete monolith, the Berlin Wall bisects the city. Kurt, a young East Berliner, often wonders what those living on the other side must think of their unseen neighbors. Do they hate the people of East Germany as completely as Kurt has been instructed to hate them?

Inspired by real events, Escape from East Berlin tells two stories of daring bids for freedom from the Eastern Bloc, set decades apart and relayed in alternating perspectives. Triumph and tragedy intertwine in this examination of both the earliest and final days of the Berlin Wall.