Author(s): Stephen Johnson

Fiction

Peace Stick is story about children hoping for a future during a nuclear confrontation between the superpowers. It is set during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. It was inspired by a former East German schoolgirl now living in Auckland.

Life for 13-year-old Ingrid Richter in Erfurt involves adventures with the Pioneers, walks in the Steigerwald, the Martini festival in the medieval Altstadt. In a few weeks, she will be gliding across the skating rink with dreams of representing East Germany at the Olympics.

Ingrid’s schoolteacher shatters that peaceful existence.

“We are on the brink of World War III”

The Soviet Union is secretly building missile sites in Cuba – minutes from the United States. Who will launch the first nuclear missile – Nikita Khrushchev or John Kennedy?

The political folly of angry men threatens Ingrid’s existence. Didn’t they learn any lessons from two world wars and the first atomic bomb? Kinder understand there are no winners in a thermonuclear war.

Emotions sway from despair to hopes of survival. Ingrid wants a future: a career, her own family, a long life.

She enlists the help of her friend, Sylvie Witzenhause. They seek a lucky charm to protect themselves and the world – a peace stick