At twenty-three years old, forensic archaeologist Courtney Brkic joined a UN-contracted team excavating mass grave sites in eastern Bosnia. She was drawn there by her family history- her father is Croatian
- & she was fluent in the language. As she describes the gruesome work of recovering remains & transcribing the memories of survivors, she retells her family`s own catastrophic history in Yugoslavia. Alternating chapters explore her grandmother`s life
- her childhood in Herzegovina, early widowhood, & imprisonment during the Second World War for hiding her Jewish lover. The movement throughout the book between the past & the present has a powerful effect, evoking belonging & nationality, what it is to feel rooted in a particular country, how its landscape forms you; & also shedding light on the roots of violence & genocide.