Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall, by Helena Merriman

What most of us have forgotten about the Berlin Wall and the Cold War, or never knew, would fill a book. And here is that book: Tunnel 29. 

At times it seemed like the Cold War, an ideological and economic conflict between the US and the USSR, focused on Berlin, the capital of Germany. It was indeed the point of closest friction between the communist and capitalist worlds from 1945 to 1989. At the end of World War 2, Germany was divided into four zones, each to be administered by one of the major Allied Powers. Berlin, located 100 miles inside the Soviet Zone, was similarly divided, creating a boundary through the middle of a densely populated urban area, following and dividing streets, alleys, the river, and arbitrary lines. In the early days, movement of people and municipal services was relatively open across the zones of Berlin.

That ended abruptly in 1961 when the communist government of East Germany decided to stop the outflow of people and talent to the West. Overnight, the boundary became real, first with barbed wire and soon with a concrete wall, and eventually with a 100-meter kill strip in front of the Wall. The Wall was also enforced by the Stasi, a secret police organization that recruited informants that informed on friends, family, neighbors and strangers.

Yet the pressure for East Berliners to move west continued. Family and relatives were on the other side. So were better jobs, better consumer goods, and political freedom. Human ingenuity worked tirelessly on means of escape: forged papers, hiding in cars and trucks, and tunnels.

In Tunnel 29, Helena Merriman gives us an intimate view into the digging of one of these tunnels – well, actually two. Researching escape projects after 50 years surely limited her choices, but she found Joachim Rudolph, a key member of this tunnel team, who had detailed recall of this project. From his memories she is able to take us inside the tunnel, appreciate the student engineering the diggers used to construct the 120-meter tunnel, remove the dirt, brace the structure and locate the terminal point. She retells the flooding that led the diggers to try an alternate tunnel, then revert to the first location after the sub rosa cooperation of the West Berlin water authorities cured the flooding. Yes, the tunnel was dug from West Berlin into East.  The excellent Stasi documentation let her trace and tell the story of Siegfried, a Stasi agent who infiltrated the project in order to report on it. She lets us see the organizing of the 29 East Berliners who would escape through the tunnel and the almost comedic work of Ellen Sesta on escape day, bringing the 29 to the tunnel opening in an East Berlin apartment. It is a tale of courage, fear, risk, circumstance, and determination. 

Oh yes, and it was all documented by NBC TV News. Reuven Frank was new to TV journalism and needed a story. Joachim’s project needed resources and money.  As we noted in our group’s discussion, you couldn’t get away with such an improbable tale in fiction. But it really did result in an award-winning TV documentary. It provided a great case study for discussion of journalistic ethics.

The thorough documentation of this particular escape allowed follow-up of the participants as they rebuilt their lives in West Germany. Some thrived in the capitalist world; others did not fare so well. Our group found this story compelling in its own right, but appreciated its extra dimensions of Cold War history, TV journalism, communist societies, and the role of walls today.

— Bill Smith

Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books, by Kirsten Miller

This has been one of my favorite reads of the year. It’s entertaining, relevant, and easy to read with laugh out loud pithy statements on today’s hot topics. Yet it shows real world consequences with the events happening in our society today. 

Lula Dean and Beverly Underwood have been rivals in Lula Dean’s mind since the high school cheerleading squad separated the girls. Living in Troy, Alabama, the women are now wives and mothers, with Beverly being the School Board President and Lula Dean living in her pink house with unrequited dreams of being a force in the community. 

Pornography was found in the baking section of the local library. It didn’t matter that the book on erotic cake decorating had been slipped into the shelves by a 13 year old prankster, but with this Lula Dean has found her calling! The children of Troy are in peril! Getting together with a group of like minded citizens, Lula and her cohorts get right to work listing books that “no right minded Christian would allow the precious children of this god fearing community to read.” Finding the same list online was proof that they had picked the right ones. 

The Concerned Parents Committee ransacked the high school, middle school, elementary and local libraries of these books. When the pictures of the confiscated books were shown on Facebook the question arose: What shall we do with these books? The answer came loud and clear–Burn them! 

An emergency community meeting the next night saw Beverly deciding that the school board would look into the matter of the books. Until a decision of how to handle the situation was reached, the books were to be stored in Beverly’s basement. 

The next morning an article about the books appears in the local paper with a picture of Lula standing next to a cabinet housing her library on her front lawn. Lula Dean’s Little Lending Library of wholesome books. 

Beverly’s daughter, Lindsay, who is gay and just heading off to her first year of college, is terribly unhappy with the situation, feeling that her mother should have handled the whole thing better. 

In the dark of night, the books in Lula’s library are switched from “wholesome” to banned with the bookcovers hiding the real titles. These books of literary classics, Black history, gay romance, Judy Blume novels and books of “witchy spells” replace Lula’s books of “The Southern Bell’s Guide to Ediquett”, “101 Cakes to Bake for your Family”, and “The Art of the Deal”. 

This sets off unexpected and unsettling events with the inhabitants of the town as they access the lending library. Lindsay, by changing the books, has kicked over a rock that had been long undisturbed-–exposing unsavory creatures living below to crawl out from under. “Nazis, rapists, and murderers, not to mention hypocritics and opportunists”– crawl out and are exposed to the community. 

A suicide of one the town’s most challenging inhabitants unearths a manifesto detailing a would be massacre on the of the people of Troy. A local Confederate general’s statue in front of the City Hall comes tumbling down as the descendants rebel against the false told tale of his honor and glory. 

All comes to a satisfying ending for Lula Dean. 

Our book club, as we like to do, discussed the cover enjoying the color, the little library of books with the lit match giving us thoughts of the novel “Fahrenheit 451.” We were very satisfied and delighted when the book cover was removed. Discover for yourself this intriguing and relevant book. It does not disappoint. 

— Deb Krueger

Twelve Post-War Tales, by Graham Swift

Reading British author Graham Swift’s short stories in Twelve Post-War Tales is a little like eating a small bowl of dulce de leche ice cream. Each bite is rich and complex, leaving an intriguing after-taste, calling us to read and re-read. To savor each story.

A paradox of literary fiction is that its extreme specificity is what allows it to feel universal. I, for instance, have nothing in common with seventy-year-old Dermot, a Cork man from York, who banters in a pub with his mates on a rainy night about a sweet girl he once knew who worked in chocolate. Innuendo, wink-wink, laughter. But who among us can read the closing passage of the story “Chocolate,” without sighing Ah yes. I have felt that way. Surely everyone has felt that way. Thank God we can feel that way.

Everything had an inky sheen. On the strip of pavement, on the kerbstones and gutter, on the surface of the street and the droplet-covered bodywork of parked cars, the reflections from the streethlights shone and shimmered. From inside looking out, before you had to go back out into it, and with two pints inside you, it all had a way of even looking quite appealing.

Who can read “Hinges” without recognizing Annie’s grief, the pointless ubiquity of the best poems to read at a funeral, and the mother’s limp, unresponsive hand Annie tries to hold? Who hasn’t had bizarre memories pop up at such times, like the one Annie has as her dad’s funeral begins, of Joe Short, a man she “fancied” when she was little, who fixed a door she later realizes has similarities to the coffin in which her dad lies.

Who, of a certain age, hasn’t imagined losing their mind (and their memories) as Anna-Maria Anderson does on her eighty-second birthday in “Passport?” Swift treats this character—and all his characters—very tenderly, but uncompromisingly.

It was 6:30 a.m. Still dark. She sat, looking forward, braced and prepared, clutching the proof of her identity, but she was really somewhere else already and she knew, as well as she ever would, who she was. She sat and she waited. She waited. She waited for the light to flash.

Our group spent three weeks discussing these twelve tales, having our favorites and least favorites, but we agreed each story was, in its own way, a remarkable capture of what it means to be a human among humans. To grow older, to be formed by memory, to wait—knowing who we are—for the light to flash.

We equivocated a little over the title and cover since—together—they imply the stories will be about the aftermath to World War II, and that’s not true of all of them. But Swift touches on various other times of turmoil (the Cuban missile crisis, North Ireland, President Kennedy’s assassination, the riots of the sixties, the pandemic) as if to argue it’s always post-war somewhere, thus a tale may be told.

— Sharelle Moranville