Peace Stick

Peace Stick is a fictional treatment of real events: 13-year-old East German schoolgirls dealing with the threat of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Ingrid Richter and Sylvie Witzenhause create a lucky charm - a Peace Stick - to protect themselves and the world. The story begins with a reunion between five mid-60s German friends in Erfurt in 2016. Ingrid is guest of honor, back from New Zealand for a working holiday. Chatter turns to life in the socialist German Democratic Republic and their most shocking experience: teacher Tomas Schulmann revealing World War III was about to start. We timeslip to October 23, 1962; Ingrid's life in Erfurt has been disturbed by a compulsory visit to the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald. Learning that the crematoria were built a few streets from home triggers a series of nightmares. The distress is compounded when students are told about the Soviet - US stand-off over nuclear missile sites in Cuba. It could lead to Armageddon if the United States launches a strike. The story follows Ingrid and Sylvie over a week. They are frustrated by the implications of the GDR's Soviet alliance. Why should young lives be at risk? Feeling powerless, Ingrid and Sylvie seek a glucksbringer - a lucky charm. They settle on the peace stick. The world will stay safe if the peace stick is found in the school wall each morning. Perhaps a silly ritual, yet comfort for students desperate to survive. A subplot develops as Ingrid's anxieties are inflamed when Cuban friends - trainee schoolteachers - return home to fight the Americans. Her older heart-throb - Pedro Barios - is also under scrutiny from the secret police. An agent's obsession envelops Ingrid's parents - Angela and Dieter. This involves a controversial stamp Pedro is selling for fares to Cuba. The theme allows an exploration of the Stasi, everyday life in Erfurt, German post-war guilt and Ingrid's escalating anxieties. The timeline for the crisis is filtered through chess and drinking sessions for Tomas Schulmann and his friend, Jurgen Grau. They are survivors from World War I, yet fear the next war most. These characters debate the political moves of Nikita Khrushchev, John Kennedy and the United Nations. They speculate on the political thinking that became apparent after the event. Ingrid and Sylvie do not rely on their daily checks of the peace stick. They seek more information about nuclear attacks and radiation fall out. An historic citadel could help them survive American bombers; they organize supplies and time trial runs from school and home to the safety of the brick walls. Their hopes rise and fall with updates from their teacher until the end of the crisis on October 28. The peace stick worked - according to Ingrid and Sylvie. The story returns to the Erfurt reunion where the males are scornful of the luck of the Peace Stick - which was left in place. Sylvie takes Ingrid back to the school where students secretly continued the tradition during later world crises. The old stick was replaced by a new measure for the Doomsday Clock; an indicator of the troubled times the world had negotiated without resorting to nuclear weapons.