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Yesterday, as part of the Speak Up for libraries program (which I wrote of in the Philadelphia Inquirer here), I spent four consecutive periods with the very special students of Downingtown West and their beloved (for such good reason) librarian, Michelle Nass. We talked about the role of libraries in our lives, and the treasures we've found there. We learned some of the history of the Berlin Wall (history libraries helped me uncover) and reflected on the metaphorical and physical walls that still separate us. We listened to Ada and Stefan of my Berlin novel Going Over weigh the consequences of freedom, asked ourselves when, if ever, we'd take the risk to jump a wall, wrote poems, and made graffiti art.

After school during the book club hour, we talked about how books get made, what editors do, the difference between writing and publishing, and the writer friends I've come to love.

I was staggered by the receptivity, creativity, and generosity of these students. Their willingness to dig in deep, to answer hard questions, to write—and eagerly share—their work. I came home with a fat file of poems and art, wanting to share every sentiment and drawing here. Space is my limitation. I share a few poems below, a collage of art above, but please know this, Downingtown West: all of it was special, and so are you.

Write about what risks are worth taking, and freedom is, I prompted. This is what happened:

What is life
but a bundle of risks
a handful of desires.
We get thrown in the mix
of temptations and hopes
but in order to obtain
the things that we want
we must go through pain.
— Mike Lodge

Freedom isn't free.
Yes, that's the irony.
We hear its cry.
We hear its call.
Yet here we are
at an ancient all.
A wall we cannot live without.
A wall that fills us up with doubt.
And some of us will take a risk.
Some of us will die to have it all.
That freedom filled with irony.
For that I would fall.
— Micky

Freedom
It's not impossible,
but it's not clear.
It's what lies in the future that is feared.

But what's life without freedom?
A life of being caged?
The only thing that gives us freedom
is change.
— August Walker

Not much is worth risking my life for.
Family, friends, love, freedom come to mind.
Would you risk everything now for a chance at freedom?
If everything could be lost, would you try?
One moment you're there, the next you're gone.
Never to see your loved ones again.
Is it really worth it, for a chance at freedom?
— Samantha Goss

Can you go against the stream?
Fight the system?
Make your own path?
It will be hard.
Blood. Loss. Isolation.
You are a soldier with no army.
You are a lone soul looking for a place
to call home.
Stay strong.
— Megan

To rebel against the evils which control
our very lives.
In hopes to prevail against the wings of Freedom
and its vibes.
These days our right to think different is
challenged by all.
Yet without the help of others our ideas
will surely fall.

What is worth my life?
What is worth my death?
What will hold me back?
What will set me free?
Love
Freedom
Freedom
Love
That is all I need.
— Emily Gibbs

Many, many thanks to Michelle Nass for organizing this day. Thanks to the students. Thanks to the librarians who do what they do and keep their doors open for us. And thank you to Jennifer Yasick, with whom I began this beautiful day.

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In just a few days the world will turn its eyes to Berlin, which will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall.

In the days to come I'll be taking that story, and GOING OVER, into a series of schools—Downingtown West, Masterman, Radnor, others—to look back, through, over walls. Why was the wall there? What did it mean? What did it do? What stories has it left behind?

Readings and workshops. Conversations and research. A few poems, a few songs, an animation. I look ahead with optimism, as I always do when I am about to meet with teens.

(With thanks to the ever gracious Ellen Trachtenberg for her great help in all of this.)

In the meantime, an utter surprise, Sister Kim of Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls, will be teaching the book in the third semester this year. A joy for me.

Also in the meantime, unbeknownst to me, GOING OVER was found in the window of the University of Pennsylvania bookstore by a friend not long ago. Thank you, Kathye, for stopping to take this photograph.

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Can I say how happy this makes me? I know that the graphic reads little small on my blog. But if you go over to the fabulous Epic Reads you'll find rocking good stuff, at the right size, for readers, teachers, and librarians.

I am grateful—to Epic Reads and to Ilene Wong, who Twittered me the news.

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and in some ways, one photograph captures it all. With huge thanks to the Chronicle team, to my friend Ruta Sepetys (whose Going Over quote is here, on the back of One Thing Stolen), and to Patricia Hruby Powell, who so beautifully reviewed Going Over for The News-Gazette; her review can be found here.

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Today was full of many things—an early morning with my dad, time with a manuscript, a fantastic (even raucous) baby shower crowded with such dear friends, a trip to the Schuylkill River to experience the Flow Festival, and almost (not quite) finding A.S. King in my own 30th Street Station (we missed each other by minutes; we will not miss each other again). Tonight, day's end, I am thinking of the souls who gathered, the baby who is waiting, the joy that convened. I am thinking, too, about a conversation—the kind I've had so rarely I could count the times on my left hand.

"We need to talk about Savas," the conversation began. The speaker was a dance friend, a tech genius, someone I hadn't seen in many months. I was so startled that at first I couldn't imagine what he meant. It was Going Over, the Berlin novel, he was speaking of. It was a decision I'd made about a character, a young Turkish boy, that he was questioning. How? he asked me. Why? Should it not have been impossible to write what I wrote down?

My friend had questions, too, about Ada and Stefan, what my west Berlin graffiti girl saw, at first, in her East Berlin lover. He wanted to know about point of view, how I decided what was to be left on stage, and off. And where did the graffiti come from, he wanted to know. Were you (in a distant past) some kind of graffiti delinquent?

I kept shaking my head. I kept smiling inside. I kept reminding myself—Wait. He took the time. He read your book. He thought about it. He wondered. I thought later how unusual this was. To be asked, with real interest, about something I'd written. To be invited to talk—not about all that superficial stuff that interests me less and less, but about the story itself. It's a rare friend who makes room for this—who presses you, who listens, who may not agree with some of the choices you made, but whose interest, nonetheless, is genuine.

I have been dancing, on and off, for a few good years now. I'm no better at it than when I began. But I dance, like I do clay, for the conversations and the friends. Of this, today—among so much laughter, within such warmth—I was reminded again.

Congratulations, in the meantime, to Aideen, Mike, and Mercy, who brought us altogether. What a family you have. And many thanks to Ms. Tirsa Rivas. One of the best party-throwers in the land.

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The 100 Children's Books to Read in a Lifetime/Readers' Picks begins like this: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Charlotte's Web, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Where the Wild Things Are, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Goodnight Moon, The Cat in the Hat, A Wrinkle in Time, Little Women, The Hobbit, Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Secret Garden, The Very Hungry Caterpillar....

And then, some sixty books in, Going Over, published by the ever-fabulous Chronicle Books. 

To those who have read, who have cared, who have taken a moment — you know who you are. To Tamra Tuller and Sally Kim and Lara Starr and Jaime Wong and Taylor Norman and Amy Rennert and Ellen Trachtenberg ....

I am incredibly grateful.

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It feels awkward to ask for your help, but today I do.

Going Over (my agent, Amy Rennert, learned) is currently listed as an Amazon 100 Children's Books to Read in a Lifetime, along with the Harry Potters, Goodnight Moon, and so many great classics.

The list is active, updated through voting. You can do that, easily, here.


Your vote would mean the world.

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Among the things that happen when you don't Google yourself is that you can sometimes overlook very kind words for which you should have long ago given thanks.

Publishers Weekly, I apologize for not knowing of your generous review of Going Over sooner. I share it here now, utterly grateful.

Kephart (Small Damages) crafts an absorbing story of young love and conflicting ideologies set in 1983 Berlin. Ada, 15, lives an impoverished life in West Berlin with her mother and grandmother, while 18-year-old Stefan—who Ada has loved for years—lives with his grandmother in dull Friedrichshain on the other side of the wall. The plot shifts between Ada's life, which includes "graffing" scenes of heroic escapes on the Wall itself and visiting Stefan when she can, and Stefan's dissatisfied days spent working as a plumber's apprentice while developing tentative plans to attempt to overcome the wall, despite the potentially fatal consequences. Kephart alternates between the two teenagers' voices, with Stefan's voice written in second-person; deeply held desires for freedom and escape, both physical and artistic, radiate from each narrative. A subplot involving a Turkish boy in need of help gives the novel additional depth, and the sharpness of the lovers' separation is as deeply felt as the worry that they will never reunite. Ages 14–up. Agent: Amy Rennert, the Amy Rennert Agency. (Apr.)

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I got behind on this day—a book to read and review, some client care, a trip to the dentist, some forever inadequate taming of the jungle of my garden (oh my), and lunch with a friend whose capacious mind is thrilling, frankly, to be near. What he knows. What he thinks. I sit back and listen.

It is not until just now, then, that I have a moment to thank Sarah Lamport Laurence for a list of tween books that has a lot of people talking. People are looking for Sarah's kind of thinking about books all the time, and today she put together a most valued collection of recommended reads for tween readers. I am honored to find both Dangerous Neighbors and Undercover included.

Additionally I am grateful to Junior Library Guild for making today its Going Over day. And I am thankful to Indigo for placing my Berlin novel on its Best Teen Books of 2014 So Far list.

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And I am flummoxed.

And INCREDIBLY grateful.

Oh my goodness.

Teresa DiFalco, Parents Choice Awards: How can I thank you?

The astonishing citation is here.

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A few days ago, Tamra Tuller and I got to talking over email, and then we kind of couldn't stop. Well, Tamra, being my editor, gently told me when it was time to stop. Otherwise, I'd have just kept going, I like this Tamra so very much.

Today our conversation is posted on the Chronicle Books Blog. It starts like this, below—

What role does an editor play in the development of a book? How does the relationship between writer and editor shape the story that emerges? Here, Chronicle editor Tamra Tuller and Going Over author Beth Kephart sit down to chat about the challenges, rewards, and often years-long process of creating a work of fiction together. 

Beth Kephart: For ten years, before I met you, I had been writing a novel called Small Damages. It had been many things. It had nearly found a publishing home. But looking back now, it was clear: It was always waiting for you. You would be the one to read, to embrace, to understand this story of southern Spain. How did I get so lucky to have you come into my life—to turn the first page of Small Damages, and then the second one?

Tamra Tuller: Well, Beth, first of all I think I am the lucky one. For me it was a no-brainer. I fell in love with your writing! It was impossible not to keep turning the pages. And it didn’t hurt that I had a love for Spain and had traveled there as a teenager. I think one of the things that makes us such a great team is that we love to travel! We also both fell in love with Berlin. Do you remember the amazing conversations we had after we had both visited?

BK: Do I remember the amazing conversations we had about Berlin? Um. Yeah. I remember all of our amazing conversations. You are one of my very favorite people to talk to, and I would say that whether we had started to create these books together or not. Sometimes I think I’m still writing books for the sole reason (also the soul reason) of continuing our conversation.

and then continues here.

Join us?

P.S.: This same Tamra Tuller, who began her literary career at Scholastic Books, wrote yesterday to say that Scholastic has bought Going Over to share with its young readers.

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Amazed and grateful, and oh, the company I keep on this treasured YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults list.

Thank you, librarians, for including me in this sweep of terrific books.

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There is no sound in this video shot across the Berlin Wall in 1971. There doesn't have to be. The faces here say it all, the blown kisses, the raised binoculars, the East Germans who do not wish to leave the friends they spot in the West across the many walls, the many divisions.

This is chilling, heartbreaking, telling, historic, and I have my friend Paul Steege, writer and historian at Villanova University, to thank for sharing it with me.

Paul also sent along a link to this Julia Baird New York Times story about the rise of female graffiti artists around the world, which ran earlier this week. The story is fascinating, end to end, and begins like this:

For decades it was thought that the reason street art was almost exclusively male was because men were more comfortable with peril; many sought it. After all, street art is notoriously dangerous, exhilarating and risky.

It is, of course, usually illegal; many street artists work at night, in wigs or masks, wearing shoes made for running. One night, when the Australian artist Vexta, who is now based in Brooklyn, was painting neon-splattered, psychedelic images in an abandoned building with friends, the police arrived. She jumped through a hole in the wall, rolled under a shutter door and ran down the street to hail a cab. No one would pick her up, since she was smeared with dirt and paint.

 Ada, I think, as I read. Ada (Going Over). She might have been Vexta. She might still be.

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We all know how Beth feels about categories. About books being books, read without prejudice.

And so I was so very happy to hear from Rory, who leads the YA Reads for Teachers (And Any Other Adults) program on Goodreads, and to learn that Going Over will be the discussion book throughout the month of June.

Chronicle contributed 15 books through a giveaway for this program (thank you, Chronicle and Stephanie Wong). Those of you who wish to participate in the conversation should follow this link to learn about the program in general, and about the Going Over discussion.

Rory and YA Reads for Teachers (And Any Other Adults), I again thank you.

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You know that Shebooks publishing venture I've been speaking of? That ever-growing cache of stories and memoirs—written by women to be read in one sitting? That brain child of Peggy Northrop and Laura Fraser that has been releasing truly fantastic e-books for a mere $2.99 each, week by week, by writers like Hope Edelman, Jane Ciabattari, Ariel Gore, and Suzanne Braun Levine?

Yes, that one.

Well, a fully enhanced Shebooks site is now live. It features author interviews, videos, extras. It offers a subscription service (currently discounted), that allows readers to buy the books they want at a low monthly price.

(Shebooks is also launching a Kickstarter "Equal Writes" campaign this coming Tuesday.)

My own Shebook, Nest. Flight. Sky. On love and loss, one wing at a time, is the first memoir I have written in many years and many books. It matters to me. Launched early this year, it now sits on the enhanced Shebooks site with extras such as an excerpt, a reading guide, and an interview which begins like this, below:

What prompted you to write Nest. Flight. Sky.?

I teach memoir at Penn, I’ve written about its glories, challenges, and consequences in Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, I blog daily about life (Beth Kephart Books), and once, a lifetime ago, I wrote five memoirs. But it has been many years and many books since I’d dared to write the extended truth. By the time Shebooks emerged, I was desperate to speak. My mother had passed away. I had become obsessed with birds and nests, but I did not understand why. I believe that it’s only in writing toward questions that we find at least some of the answers. I wrote Nest. Flight. Sky. to find some answers.

Birds and nests have been a recurrent theme in your work. What is the origin of this?

Nest. Flight. Sky: On love and loss, one wing at a time is, indeed, about recurrent images. It’s about those birds, those wings, those nests that have entered into all the fiction I have written—one book after another, ever since my mother died. It all began with winter finches tapping on my windowpane in the months after her passing. It became a quest for hawks, for hummingbirds, for flight.

When did you first decide you were a writer? 

Do we ever decide that we are writers? Or do we just decide that we must write, that we will not be able to breathe if we do not? I’m not sure, even all these books in, that I am a writer. I think readers are in charge of that decision. I only know that, since I was nine, words and their melodies gave me a sense of being nearly whole.

To read the whole thing, go here.

And local readers, please join me and other writers today at Main Point Books to help celebrate the first year in the life of an Indie. I'll be signing Going Over and Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir. For more on that, go here.

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A few weeks ago I taught the Berlin Wall at a Philadelphia school where graffiti is part and parcel of the capstone process. 

I tell that story today on Huffington Post.

I speak of this young man, the s

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Anybody who knows me knows how I feel about labels. Applied to people. Applied to literature.

Still, those of us who write young adult fiction must, at times, face those who suggest that it is a lesser form, not nearly as important as the work written expressly for adults—a problem I discussed in a story for Publishing Perspectives titled, "Removing the YA Label: A Proposal, A Fantasy."

(Those of us who write quote-unquote literary contemporary YA fiction must also endure the suggestion that John Green has singlehandedly ushered in this genre's golden era, but that's a topic for another conversation, and we must be careful not to blame John Green for what is written about him.)

The problem with the YA-is-lesser assessment is that the YA writers I respect aren't writing down, aren't writing in haste, aren't writing with any less literary ambition than those who write novels for adults. We're just writing stories that happen to have younger protagonists at their heart; often we're writing "whole family" tales. Always, if we're serious about this stuff, if we're writing not toward known trends but toward felt story, we're writing as best as we can.

And so I will admit to feeling equal measures of joy and peace at finding Going Over on the Main Line Today list of 10 great beach reads by local authors. Not 10 YA books. Just ten books by authors ranging from Robin Black and Jennifer Weiner to Kelly Corrigan and Ken Kalfus. Ten books curated by Cathy Feibach of Main Point Books, who has made it her business, in this, the first year of her store's existence, to get to know who is writing what and to evaluate each book on its own terms.

I am honored. And I am looking forward to next Saturday, when I will drive down Lancaster Avenue and stop in Bryn Mawr and spend an hour signing both Going Over and Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir in Cathy's store. My signing caps a full day of signings, the details for which are here. And when I'm not signing, you can be sure that I'll be buying the books I want, seeing straight past their labels.

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With gratitude, as always. I do know how lucky I am.

Additionally, my wonderful friend Karen Bernstein—she of gifts from Diane Keaton, she of brilliant Going Over pots—reports that she found Going Over on page 71 of the new issue of Main Line Today Magazine listed as one of the "ten great beach reads by local authors." Huge thanks to Karen, and to the magazine.

I have always loved being local.

Speaking of local: Come celebrate the first year in the life of Main Point Books next Saturday, when a fleet of super cool local authors will be signing books. I'll be there at three o'clock with both Going Over and Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir. More on the day can be found here.

Finally, more on Going Over can be found here, through the hugely generous BCCB review.

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No words for this Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books review of Going Over. With huge thanks to whomever took the time to read and to craft these words.

Sincerely grateful.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
June 2014

“A keenly intimate story of human love made epic by circumstances.”-- Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books


The Berlin Wall divides fifteen-year-old Ada Piekarz from her boyfriend, Stefan, in 1980s Germany, and vibrant, rebellious Ada, “Professor of Escape,” desperately wants Stefan to make the dangerous trek over the wall to freedom and to her. In West Berlin, Ada lives with her depressed mother and worried grandmother in a squatter’s co-op, working in a day care for the children of immigrant Turkish laborers, and, by night, illegally creating spray-paint murals on the Berlin Wall to celebrate those who have safely escaped from the Communist-controlled East. She’s determined to see herself as the person who can take care of herself and everybody else, but her inability to fight the world is tearing at her and making her push Stefan; her pressure becomes stronger as she deals with the aftermath of her own rape and seeks to rescue one of her beloved young charges, who disappears after indications of dangerous domestic violence in his family. Brave and heartfelt Ada is an arresting character, appealing as a committed activist, a punky urban artist, and a young girl in love (she and Stefan, whose grandmothers were girlhood friends, grew up knowing each other). Stefan’s yearning for her, expressed in chapters addressed entirely to her in the second person, seems utterly justified even as it’s clearly tied into his yearning for all kinds of change and liberation. Kephart’s crystalline, resilient prose vividly evokes 1980s Berlin, with elders still deeply marked by World War II, the gulf between East and West tantalizingly narrow (Stefan can sometimes see Ada from his balcony), and the economy running on an ill-paid foreign underclass. Sure, there’s plenty of political extrapolation to current events and issues, but it’s also a keenly intimate story of human love made epic by circumstances.
  

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So pleased to be part of this stellar line up of local authors to help celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Main Line's newest independent bookstore.

Join us — May 24th. Main Point is the cute shop at 1041 West Lancaster Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA.

See you soon?

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A few weeks ago, the beautiful (inside and out) Caroline Starr Rose asked me to reflect on the writing of historical fiction. What typically comes first, she wanted to know—character, era, or story idea? How do I do my research? Why do I love  research? And why is historical fiction important?

I answered that final question like this:

Why is historical fiction important?
I think it is so important to try to imagine ourselves into the lives of others during critical junctures in world history. It is a hugely empathetic act. And empathy is, finally, what storytelling is all about—empathy for others, and empathy for ourselves.

You can find our entire conversation on Caroline's blog, here.

Always a privilege to be in the company of this talented, award-winning writer.

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Later this morning I'll be talking about the Berlin Wall and Going Over with the students of the Science Leadership Academy, a Franklin Institute-affiliated school that is on a mission to instill the values of learning, creation, and leadership.

It's all part of the innovative 4th Floor Chapbook Series initiative spurred by Philadelphia's daring craft publishing house, The Head and the Hand.

(Don't you love how real people keep thinking?)

More on the 4th Floor Chapbook Series can be found here.

More about the Science Leadership Academy is here.

But also, since I'm talking about cool people and places, I share the photo above, taken yesterday afternoon in Old City, following the glorious final Pennsylvania Ballet performance of my friend, the principal dancer Julie Diana Hench. (More on Julie here.) This is the alley facade of the Center for Art in Wood, and the image was painted and installed by ex-offenders and probationers from the Restorative Justice Guild Program. It's all part of the Mural Arts Program, now well into its 30th transformative year. I recently had the great pleasure of talking with Jane Golden, Mural Arts founder and leader, over lunch, and I'll have more to say about her vision later this summer as I reflect on psychylustro, the new installation now going up along a several-mile stretch between Amtrak's 30th Street and North Philadelphia stations.

Take a look if you are traveling that way. Tell me what you think. I've caught early glimpses already—shocking, electric—and will be watching for those intense colorations again as I ride the rails to the city.

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I'm always honored when Peter Glassman of Books and Wonder notices a book I've written and invites me to his store.

So of course I said yes to his recent invitation to join Brian Conaghan, Padma Venkatraman, Lindsay Smith, and Marthe Jocelyn for


New York friends, I hope you will join us for this panel discussion and signing. More information is here.

And thanks, too, to two recent reviewers who found Going Over and had kind things to say. Miss Literati concluded her review with these words:

I found GOING OVER to be exhilarating to read. It was a great book and I’m excited to read other books by Beth Kephart! — Miss Literati

And then there was Ruth Compton, Librarian and Readers' Advisor, who wrote:

Ms Kephart has created a hauntingly lyrical and powerful story about lives in a divided Berlin, about choices and consequences, about love and loss that draws you in and won’t let you go long after you’ve put the book down. —  Ruth Compton

Thank you, Miss Literati and Ruth. And hello, Books of Wonder.

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Remember that Going Over vase of last week? Given to me on the day of my book party, also known as the day of one of the worst spring deluges ever to hit my area, a deluge that closed the street in front of the library, where my event was being held? Yes. That gorgeous, gorgeous graffiti vase. Made especially for me by my friend, Karen Bernstein.

Well, Karen was fighting the torrential downpour in NYC that very night, where she had gone to see Diane Keaton, whom she adores. Karen had, in her hands, a copy of Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, which celebrates Keaton's Then Again. Miss Keaton said yes to accepting the gift and then inscribed a book for me (a gift from Karen).

In case there is any doubt in your mind about what Miss Keaton wrote, please let me translate:

Beth! Hope to meet you someday.

I mean. Really.

Really!!

That is Diane Keaton, signing my book. That is my generous and talented friend Karen, standing by. This is my life, which is very small and very big at once. I share it, gratefully, with you.

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My YA writing friends — not only is this an incredibly inventive development (a craft press publishing YA chapbooks for area students)—but this spells opportunity, for you.

The press release from The Head & The Hand Press follows. I'm stoked to be part of the process and program, happy to be traveling to the Science Leadership Academy on May 12 on behalf of this initiative. But I'm equally stoked to share this publishing opportunity (I'm look at you!) here.

We at The Head & The Hand Press <http://www.theheadandthehand.com/> , a craft publisher based in Fishtown, are so excited to collaborate with the students and teachers at the Science Leadership Academy <http://www.scienceleadership.org/>  on our latest project, the 4th Floor Chapbook Series <http://www.theheadandthehand.com/4th-floor-chapbook-series/> . We've been vending chapbooks for the general population to great acclaim <http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inq-blinq/Philly-coffee-shop-is-vending-verse.html>  in Philly establishments like Elixr coffee house and Honeygrow in a custom-built countertop vending machine, but now it's time to swap out snacks for YA lit and poetry in a new vending machine to be installed at the SLA high school in Center City this fall. To celebrate this partnership, YA author Beth Kephart <http://beth-kephart.blogspot.com/p/we-could-be-heroes-berlin-novel.html>  has graciously agreed to do a reading of her recent novel Going Over, a love story set in Berlin before the wall is torn down, at the high school. A bit more about the book and Beth are below. The reading will take place on Monday, May 12 at 11:40 a.m. at the Science Leadership Academy at 55 N. 22nd St.

About Going Over:

It is February 1983, and Berlin is a divided city—a miles-long barricade separating east from west. But the city isn’t the only thing that is divided. Ada, almost 16, lives with her mother and grandmother among the rebels, punkers, and immigrants of Kreuzberg, just west of the wall. Stefan, 18, lives east with his brooding grandmother in a faceless apartment bunker of Friedrichshain, his telescope pointed toward freedom. Bound by love and separated by circumstance, their only chance lies in a high-risk escape. But will Stefan find the courage to leap? Will Ada keep waiting for the boy she has only seen four times a year ever since she can remember? Or will forces beyond their control stand in their way?

Told in the alternating voices of the pink-haired graffiti artist and the boy she loves, Going Over is a story of daring and sacrifice, choices and consequences, and love that will not wait.

Click <http://beth-kephart.blogspot.com/p/we-could-be-heroes-berlin-novel.html>  for downloads, trailers, interviews and guest blog posts

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of eighteen books, an adjunct professor of creative nonfiction at the University of Pennsylvania, a frequent contributor to the Chicago Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer, and the strategic writing partner in a boutique marketing communications firm. Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir won the 2013 Books for a Better Life Award (Motivational Category). Nests. Flight. Sky., Kephart’s first memoir in years, was recently published by Shebooks. Most recently, Beth’s ninth young adult novel, Going Over (Chronicle Books), a 1983 Berlin story and a Junior Library Guild Selection, was launched to three starred reviews.

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