Beyond the Blue Border

Movie release in Spring 2022!

How far would you go for freedom?

Hanna and Andreas have got to get out of East Germany. Stuck in dead-end factory jobs after being expelled from school for «agitating against the state,» they’ve got no guarantee of safety and no chance at a better future.

The teens hatch a daring plan: swim over forty miles across the Baltic Sea from their hometown of Rostock to the West German town of Fehmarn. Their grueling twenty-five hour journey is unspeakably dangerous. Hypothermia, exhaustion, jellyfish, a violent summer storm, and the constant threat of being caught by Soviet patrols. Will they find the freedom they so desperately seek, or will the weight of their past drag them under?

 

US cover (Charlesbridge, September 2021)