Date of Award

2024-05-01

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts

Department

Creative Writing

Advisor(s)

Nelson Cardenas

Abstract

A work of fiction. A story of Love, Treachery, and Freedom on the East German border in 1989. Iron Curtains is a story of four individuals in East and West Germany brought together by an espionage investigation and the revolution in East Germany which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain on November 9, 1989. Their stories ultimately intersect as the year passes and culminate in an escape through a tunnel underneath the East German border. There are four main characters and several secondary characters who help drive the story forward by their interaction with the main characters. These main characters are: Augustina Hermosillo (Tina), a 21 year old rookie Counterintelligence Agent from Tucson. She’s arrived on a secret mission to investigate her boss, Nick, and finds herself in a tangled web of potential espionage. Her attraction to Nick and her desire to save him from his self-destruction gets in the way and, during their investigation of the suspect Markus Kaiser, they are led to a small little factory that sits just across the Iron Curtain, in a misty little river valley. They observe the factory from a hilltop on the west, and that’s where Tina, armed with a camera, see Hans sitting in his office in the factory. She feels his despair and is drawn to the idea of contacting him and helping him escape East Germany. Nick Torman – Tina’s Supervisor and tasked with training her, something he does not want to do. He’s a grizzled black operative, traumatized by a failed mission, taking the slow way out of life by drinking himself to death and flirting with the quick way out, his gun. He’s surprised by Tina suddenly in his life and the magic she’s having on him. He needs to protect her and heal. Nick is deeply involved in the twisted web Tina is investigating, and we don’t know how deep until the very end. Hans Jurgens – a retired East German Olympian, he has an office in the factory, but no responsibility, and he desperately wants to escape East Germany, taste freedom, and show them that they can’t possess him and his family. He has a mysterious connection with the falcon that lives on the hilltop in the West. In spite of his guilt for not contributing to the revolution, he’s being awarded a medal of high honor. Hans’ journey takes us through the landscape of the 1989 revolution in East Germany. Dieter Wolff - the party commissar at the factory and guards his power jealously, not only to appease the system, but because there is a secret tunnel underneath the Iron Curtain that begins with the “dungeon door” in his basement office. Dieter suffers from greed and the fact that he renounced true love for the little power he has. The tunnel was being used only to smuggle fine food ingredients so he could craft wonderful recipes for an Italian restaurant in the West owned by his forlorn lover, Markus. But now they are controlled by a mysterious Russian KGB Agent using them to smuggle Soviet gold bars out, and blood diamonds into East Germany.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

167 p.

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

John G Dodson

Download

Share

COinS