Eleven-year-old Josie escapes Communist East Germany with her parents. Can she forge a new life in Canada while clinging to her passion figure skating?

Ann Alma's books appears on the children's books bestseller lists and on the British Columbia government's recommended reading lists. She lives on a hobby farm in the West Kootenay mountains near Nelson, British Columbia.

Eleven-year-old Josie Grun escapes from Communist East Germany with her mother and father one dark night in 1989 just months before the Berlin Wall comes tumbling down. Braving border guards, barbed wire, and rifle shots, Josie reluctantly turns her back on her best friend, Greta, and all that was once familiar. She crosses the ocean to join her uncle in Calgary, attempts to learn a foreign language, and overcomes the prejudices of her schoolmates in order to forge a new life. Clinging to the passion that has always been a comfort, her figure skating, she enters a local competition to prove that she is free on the ice and off.