An impossible-to-put-down important read about the Serbian-Croatian war and its impact on children, specifically one, the narrator, Ana.
Ana's story is full of love and strength, sorrow and loneliness. She is a true heroine who survives what most would think unsurvivable and eventually leaves her country of birth and the only world she has ever known to land in America.
During this timeframe, 1991-1995, I wasn't paying attention, preoccupied with my own war: living in Israel, First Gulf War, and the false promise of peace that followed. Thank you, Sara Novic, for waking me up and reminding me of our shared struggles.
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016
Growing up in Zagreb in the summer of 1991, 10-year-old Ana Juric is a carefree tomboy; she runs the streets with her best friend, Luka, helps take care of her baby sister, Rahela, and idolizes her father. But when civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, football games and school lessons are supplanted by sniper fire and air raid drills.
The brutal ethnic cleansing of Croats and Bosnians tragically changes Ana's life, and she is lost to a world of genocide and child soldiers; a daring escape plan to America becomes her…
A fan of stories inspired by true events, I devoured this book. Civil Townsend is a Black nurse in post-segregation Montgomery, Alabama, who blows the whistle on a cruel injustice done to her patients.
She is tenacious, stubborn, and fierce about her beliefs and profession. While she strives to do right by her patients at the family planning clinic, she cannot stand by silently when she sees all the wrongs in their lives. The story follows her career from start to finish/retirement, and I found myself rooting for her at every step, every naysayer, and every obstacle along the way.
Montgomery, Alabama. 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference in her community. She wants to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies.
But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a tumbledown cabin and into the heart of the Williams family, Civil learns there is more to her new role than she bargained for. Neither of the two young sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black, and for…
Born in the San Francisco Bay Area with immigrant grandparents, I couldn't put this book down.
This is the story of photographer Dorothea Lange's arrival in San Francisco in 1918, the people she met, the friends she made, the city she adopted, the pictures she took, and the artists who lived side by side in what is now Little Italy.
It is beautifully rendered with grit and tension, everything that makes for good writing. We learn about the Spanish flu, the wars, the Golden Gate Bridge, the anti-Chinese sentiment, the corrupt politicians, artists, and the great bohemians and their supporters whose steep streets bear their names.
A dazzling novel of one of America’s most celebrated photographers, Dorothea Lange, exploring the wild years in San Francisco that awakened her career-defining grit, compassion, and daring.
“Jasmin Darznik expertly delivers an intriguing glimpse into the woman behind those unforgettable photographs of the Great Depression, and their impact on humanity.”—Susan Meissner, bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things
In this novel of the glittering and gritty Jazz Age, a young aspiring photographer named Dorothea Lange arrives in San Francisco in 1918. As a newcomer—and naïve one at that—Dorothea is grateful for the fast friendship of Caroline Lee, a vivacious,…
When American-born Jennifer falls in love with French-born Philippe during the First Intifada in Israel, she understands their relationship isn't perfect.
Both 23 and Jewish, they lead very different lives: she's a secular tourist, he's an observant immigrant. Despite their opposing outlooks on two fundamental issues—country and religion—they are determined to make it work. For the next 20 years, they root and uproot their growing family, each longing for a singular place to call home.
In Places We Left Behind, Jennifer puts her marriage under a microscope, examining commitment and compromise, faith and family while moving between prose and poetry, playing with language and form, daring the reader to read between the lines.
