Beautiful prose tells the horrific story of a child navigating the realities of living in a war-torn city during her coming-of-age years.

Zagreb, 1991: Ana is a ten-year-old who wants to live a normal life of adventure and discovery, but the breaking apart of Yugoslavia in violent bloody pieces that shatter her childhood make it difficult for her to play freely and mature naturally.

And then she finds herself gone, adopted by a new culture and a foreign family and wrestling with a deep confusing conflict of soul and identity. The girl is at war within, trying to choose which of her cultures she wants and needs, and to remember the Croatia of her childhood and find herself in the midst of the sanitised rubble. 

A stark emotional journey that takes us into a view of what damage lingers in the heart of those who have grown in these war torn conditions, despite the veneer they may adorn their polished surfaces in the years that follow.

Julia Whelan’s narration delivers a melancholic story with smooth ease, softening the edges yet transmitting the intensity and love of a family in the midst of personal and national tragedy.