The Girl in the Purple Jacket
Inspired by the true story of one woman’s courageous escape from behind the Iron Curtain.
She would rather risk death than spend one more day under the former East German communist regime.
Born in East Germany in 1969, Karlina grows up behind the Iron Curtain with the unsettling sense that life must hold something more than the narrow future already decided for her.
She cannot explain it. She has no proof that another life is waiting.
She only knows she cannot remain.
At twenty, Karlina risks everything to escape through Prague into West Germany, carrying little more than determination, a purple jacket given in kindness, and an unshakable belief that somewhere beyond the border, a different life might be possible.
Crossing into freedom should have been the ending.
Instead, it is only the beginning.
With no home, little money and no map for what comes next, Karlina must learn how to survive in a world she has imagined for years yet does not understand. Refugee camps, unfamiliar systems, loneliness and uncertainty replace the restrictions she has left behind. Freedom offers possibilities she has never known, though it comes without promises.
And there are new dangers.
Trust will cost her. Love will wound her. People will enter her life who take advantage of everything she does not yet know, while others will appear when she least expects them and remind her that kindness still exists.
Again and again, Karlina is forced to choose: retreat into fear, or trust the quiet instinct that has carried her this far.
Each choice takes her further from the girl she once was.
Across countries, heartbreak, danger and extraordinary acts of courage, she begins building a life no one could have predicted — least of all Karlina herself. A life that will eventually lead her towards a new country, an unexpected love, and a future far beyond anything she once dared to imagine.
Yet to reach it, she must first discover something no border crossing can give her:
the courage to believe that she is free.
The Story Behind the Novel
In 1989, at just twenty years old, Katrin Costa left East Germany in search of freedom.
Her journey took her to the West German Embassy in Prague, where thousands of East Germans were seeking a way to the West. The embassy was packed, with not enough beds for everyone. People arrived daily as others left for a new life.
These are original photographs from Katrin’s time at the embassy. Decades later, those experiences became part of the inspiration for The Girl in the Purple Jacket and the story of Karlina.
