This can't be real, I thought. But I had the same feeling I had whenever Saba told me his stories: that somewhere, somehow, the impossible had happened. Ever since she arrived in Germany on a school trip, Ellie Baum has felt the weight of history on her. After all, she's the first one in her family to return since her grandfather's miraculous escape from a death camp, and in Berlin, pieces of the past - World War II, the Cold War - are still visible...

In the days before the treacherous overnight raising of the Berlin Wall, teenaged cousins Drew, an American army brat in West Berlin, and Matthias, a young communist in East Berlin, become wary friends on opposite sides of the Cold War. Interspersed throughout the story are captioned photographs from the era.

"Berlin, 1931: Ally Keller, a talented young poet, is alone and scared when she gives birth to a mixed-race daughter she names Lilith. As the Nazis rise to power, Ally knows she must keep her baby in the shadows to protect her against Hitler's deadly ideology of Aryan purity. But as she grows, it becomes more and more difficult to keep Lilith hidden, so Ally sets in motion a dangerous and desperate plan to send her daughter across the ocean to safety....

With the rise of the Berlin Wall, twelve-year-old Gerta finds her family suddenly divided. She, her mother, and her brother Fritz live on the eastern side, controlled by the Soviets. Her father and middle brother, who had gone west in search of work, cannot return home. Gerta knows it is dangerous to watch the wall, to think forbidden thoughts of freedom, yet she can't help herself. She sees the East German soldiers with their guns trained on their...