
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 & idolizes her father But when civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia football games & school lessons are supplanted by sniper fire & air raid drills The brutal ethnic cleansing of Croats & Bosnians tragically changes Ana's life & she is lost to a world of genocide & child soldiers; a daring escape plan to America becomes her only chance for survival Ten years later she returns to Croatia a young woman struggling to belong to either country forced to confront the trauma of her past & rediscover the place that was once her home