Willner also starts each chapter with a moving quote, which I thought was perfect. It was also great that Nina added photographs and quotes throughout the book. I found it to be a great resource for first-hand and second-hand accounts of the war and the heartbreaking things that families had to endure when Germany put up that wall. She takes us deep into the tumultuous and terrifying world of East Germany under Communist rule, revealing both the cruel reality her relatives endured and her own experiences as an intelligence officer, running secret operations behind the Berlin Wall that put her life at risk.Ī personal look at a tenuous era that divided a city and a nation, and continues to haunt us, Forty Autumns is an intimate and beautifully written story of courage, resilience, and love-of five women whose spirits could not be broken, and who fought to preserve what matters most: family.Īt 416 pages, this book is an investment.įollowing the events in this book, I grew to know and feel for Nina’s family.īefore I read this story, I couldn’t recall the events of the Cold War that I’m sure I learned in middle school history class. In Forty Autumns, Nina recounts her family’s story-five ordinary lives buffeted by circumstances beyond their control. In this illuminating and deeply moving memoir, a former American military intelligence officer goes beyond traditional Cold War espionage tales to tell the true story of her family-of five women separated by the Iron Curtain for more than forty years, and their miraculous reunion after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

So, when I heard about the opportunity to join a book tour for Forty Autumns, I couldn’t turn it down and it didn’t disappoint. As a new contributor to Literary Quicksand, you may not know how much I enjoy reading historical fiction (and non-fiction, in this case) yet.

Nina willner author