Forty Autumns

Forty Autumns
Author: Nina Willner
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2016-10-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0062410334

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. Forty Autumns makes visceral the pain and longing of one family forced to live apart in a world divided by two. At twenty, Hanna escaped from East to West Germany. But the price of freedom—leaving behind her parents, eight siblings, and family home—was heartbreaking. Uprooted, Hanna eventually moved to America, where she settled down with her husband and had children of her own. Growing up near Washington, D.C., Hanna’s daughter, Nina Willner became the first female Army Intelligence Officer to lead sensitive intelligence operations in East Berlin at the height of the Cold War. Though only a few miles separated American Nina and her German relatives—grandmother Oma, Aunt Heidi, and cousin, Cordula, a member of the East German Olympic training team—a bitter political war kept them apart. In Forty Autumns, Nina recounts her family’s story—five ordinary lives buffeted by circumstances beyond their control. 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. A 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. Forty Autumns is illustrated with dozens of black-and-white and color photographs.

Summary of Nina Willner's Forty Autumns

Summary of Nina Willner's Forty Autumns
Author: Everest Media,
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
Total Pages: 38
Release: 2022-04-17T22:59:00Z
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1669386236

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 After World War II, my grandmother, Oma, was one of the first people in her village to emerge from the underground cellar. She and her children moved back into the family house. As women in the village waited for their husbands and sons to return, they became alarmed when stories began circulating that the Soviets were raping and killing German women. #2 The Americans arrived in Schwaneberg in mid-May, and the village was quickly enamored with them. The soldiers sent the village children into fits of giggles when they botched German phrases, and they called everyone Schatzi, an endearment reserved for parents or for those in love. #3 The Americans established calm and control over Schwaneberg, and the villagers began to trust them. But they had to leave suddenly, and the villagers were scared of the Soviets coming. #4 Hanna had come into the world on a bitterly cold, dark winter night in Trabitz, a tiny hamlet on the Saale River. Outside the schoolhouse, the winds had kicked up enormous snowflakes that had wildly flown about all evening long and never seemed to settle. The rooftops and trees were covered in a thick white blanket of snow.

The Stone-Mason of Saint Point

The Stone-Mason of Saint Point
Author: A. De Lamartine
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2023-10-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 3385201837

Reprint of the original, first published in 1873.