This book is still living with me a year or more on from reading the book - the sign of really impressive storytelling! It's a winning combination of thrilling, edge of your seat tension and heartwrenching, empathy-building plot. Gerta's family live in east Germany, and her father and older brother travel to the west on the fateful night that the Wall (a barbed wire topped fence to begin with) appears along the border between the two. With no contact permissible and even glancing across the wall on her walk to school running the risk of drawing the attention of the brutal police, Gerta can only wonder what has become of half of her family....until, one day, she thinks she sees them dancing on a rooftop. Their message, hidden in mime, is to dig......but where from? And where to? And can she find the courage to defy her mother and dodge the constant threat of danger of discovery in order to do what needs to be done to reunite her family?

An utterly immersive courage and strength, of fighting for what is right in the face of oppression, of family connection and sibling love, this is a book not to be missed! Hoghly recommended!