A small-town teacher's kid, little sister of a genius, Amy Hallberg dreamed of escape by way of a West German exchange in 1987.
The resulting friendship with her exchange sister, Eva, awakened a lifelong quest to understand all things German.
Back home in Minnesota, Hallberg embarked on a German literature major just as the Berlin Wall fell.
As Frau Hallberg, high school teacher, she hoped to impart vital knowledge (in a language she'd never mastered, on a country where she'd never truly lived).
She soon discovered the most profound lessons were notes to self, delivered not in German, but in her own mother tongue.