MY COLD WAR COLD CASE: The True Story of My Journey to Find a Friend Who Vanished Behind the Berlin Wall  
is a jigsaw puzzle, whodunnit, and stranger-than-fiction memoir, all wrapped up in one. 

It’s also the story of a middle-aged mom learning to spread her wings in an emptying nest. Because her daughter Mimi has survived a teen mental health crisis, Debby knows she needs more practice letting go before high school ends. Oof. Hard. Maybe a project exploring her own pre-motherhood identity will help? So Debby sets out to search for someone she left behind long ago. Katja—the dissident who mysteriously disappeared when Debby was a Brown University student in authoritarian East Germany.

Before long, Debby’s search for Katja pivots from project to obsession. Shocking twists bring her face-to-face with buried secrets, Cold War spies, and the chilling choices authoritarianism forces on ordinary people. And that’s not all. Facing her twenty-year-old self again is what finally teaches Debby how to let go of her daughter … without leaving Mimi behind.