In a small university town in East Germany, during the hard winter of 1955, a plot emerges - tangled yet uncontrived - to put a lump in your throat.

Told to the author by her grandfather, this is a tale of fear, distrust and bravery. Threads of doubt and deceit are interwoven with endearing touches of goodness, dry humour and the bygone patterns of everyday life. Its gravity is simple yet emotional.

Uta, a young police lady, is plucky and right-minded having had fixed on a plan, gives it her best shot. 
Isolde, a shy and ingenuous musician, with her patched clothes and innocent ways, submits obediently to a wrongful death.

The players, inured to hardship and intrigue, are neither deluded nor pretentious. They have simpler and less hard-to-unravel motives than modern society's galaxy of posers and dissemblers.