"This is perhaps the most exciting thing I have ever mailed you,"

 

writes Tamra Tuller.

And, indeed, it is.

What gorgeous (GORGEOUS) work Tamra Tuller and Chronicle Books have done on behalf of Going Over. Look at the neon pop of green. Look at the stenciled Ada, my heroine, who was inspired by one of Chronicle's own (look at the second picture; do you see the likeness?). Look at the boy and how he jumps. Look at the graffiti grit.

Sometimes everything is just right.

This is one of these times.

All love to Tamra Tuller, my editor, to whom this book is dedicated. All love to Jennifer Tolo Pierce, the designer who gorgeous-fied this book—inside and out. And all love to Ginee Seo, Lara Starr, Stephanie Wong, and Amber Morley of Chronicle Books.

It is a privilege.

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Going Over: The Berlin Book Cover Reveal

This is one of the most spectacular book covers I've ever seen.

How amazing, therefore, that it will now be associated with a book I wrote—a book that had its beginnings in a trip I took to Berlin and in a conversation I had with the ever-dear Tamra Tuller.

I have Tamra, my editor, to whom this book is dedicated, to thank for seeing this cover through. I have Ginee Seo, Lara Starr, Stephanie Wong, and the entire Chronicle team—for their great enthusiasm and care. And for this gorgeous, thoughtful, it-says-it-all imagery, I have Jennifer Tolo Pierce, the director of design at Chronicle. Jennifer, this is perfection.

This, then, is Going Over, due out from Chronicle next April 1st. I so eagerly anticipate this release.

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.

“Beth Kephart has done it again. She’s spun gold out of the language of longing and has shown us how to make room for miracles. This novel –about a boy and girl separated by the cruelest of fates–will inspire any reader to make the leap for love.”

Patricia McCormick, author of National Book Award Finalists Sold and Never Fall Down  

“An unforgettable portrayal of life and love divided. Kephart captures the beauty and desperation of 1980's Berlin with prose both gripping and graceful.” 

Ruta Sepetys, New York Times bestselling author of Between Shades of Gray and Out of the Easy

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We Could Be Heroes—the interior pages arrive

How rewarding it is to begin to see We Could Be Heroes take such glorious shape in the hands of Chronicle Books, page designer Jennifer Tolo Pierce, and my editor Tamra Tuller. This book will be out next spring.

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