Long Fiction

Former Hopeful

In a sentence: When an East German star student, primed to become an ideal comrade, defies the regime, her future unravels – first through the authorities’ retaliation, and then in the dangerous company she keeps amid the chaos after the Berlin Wall’s fall.

In a few more: It’s the late 1980s in a communist model city in East Germany and fourteen-year-old Nina Martell is on track to become the ideal comrade – top of her school and a rising star in athletics. But the pressure to always fall in line with the regime’s rigid demands sparks a rebellious urge: to make her own decisions. When she refuses a loyalty oath to the Soviet Union, everything changes. Overnight, she goes from model student to threat to the system: watched, punished and cut off.

Barred from track and field and shunned by her peers, Nina finds a lifeline in Freddie, a cool girl in black who shows her she’s not the only one struggling to conform. Together, they bond over the music of The Cure and join a group of fellow teen outsiders where Nina finds connection, excitement, and first love with Kramer -- a boy everyone else has written off. But these friendships make her a target: soon she’s running from state police, while the school principal hammers in that there’s no future for a girl like her and threatens re-education.

When the Berlin Wall unexpectedly falls, her tormentors are swept from power -- school authorities replaced, the once-constant police suddenly nowhere to be found – and for a moment, it feels like she’s won.

However, hope gives way to chaos as the economy crashes and Nina’s single mother loses her job. In the vacuum of authority, Nina’s boyfriend Kramer steps up and turns their group toward skinhead extremism. Nina, appalled by the adults’ helplessness in the face of their rapidly shifting world, sticks with her friends – even as they roam the streets and spread fear.

But when their hangout becomes an armed squat and a classmate is hurt, Nina can no longer ignore what she’s become a part of. She must finally confront her own complicity and decide: Is she bold enough to break away and shape a life of her own – or will she let the former regime’s words ring true: that there’s no future for someone like her.