Amra Sabic-El-Rayess was a Bosnian teenager in the city of Bihać in the early 1990s when Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats were at war. This account chronicles the fate of her family and the small calico cat, Maci, which she finds early on in the conflict and becomes a good luck talisman throughout the period of brutal ethnic cleansing and the gradual improvement of their lives. Amra's family, secular Muslims, was spared the worst of the genocide, but knowledge that many men and boys are being killed by Serbs, and of what often happens to women and girls during times of conflict, makes her fear palpable. The war disrupted Amra's pursuit of education, but she sought out every possible opportunity. And war didn't get in the way of falling in love, a young romance she thought would last. Above all, this is the story of family love, however, and their experience through displacement, threat of starvation, a return to home, and efforts to carve out a new means of survival. This account would have benefited from a preface providing an overview of the war for young adult readers today, but that doesn't detract from its impact. An author's note explains how she took creative liberty with her personal timeline as it relates to some events.
(Age 13 and older)