We Are All That's Left

March 1, 2018
A mother and daughter with a strained relationship cope with the legacy of horrific violence.Zara is the daughter of an interfaith marriage between her mostly secular parents: a Bosnian Muslim mother and white Catholic father. She is an ordinary American girl in many ways despite her fraught relationship with her traumatized mother--Zara knows that Nadja was a refugee, but her mother's emotional distance has stopped her from learning the details of her past. An ISIS bombing at a Rhode Island farmers market leaves Zara wounded and her mother comatose but also opens up the path for Zara to finally understand her mother's story. At the hospital she develops a close friendship with a spiritually seeking, biracial (Haitian and Irish) boy who is there visiting his grandmother. Interwoven chapters tell the story of Nadja in 1990s Bosnia, where she was an equally ordinary adolescent, treasuring mix tapes from her Serbian boyfriend. But the Bosnian War changes everything, and Nadja finds herself a survivor of genocide, having experienced crimes so horrific she's blocked them out. Ethnic and religious conflict among modern Europeans contrasts sharply with racist Islamophobia in Zara's contemporary New England. The search for faith and meaning pervades the story, but, disappointingly, the narrative too often filters spirituality through Western and Christian lenses. The long, complex history of the South Slavs is also overly simplified.Despite its shortcomings, this important and timely novel is a painful, lovely exploration of mending a mother-daughter relationship. (author's note, bibliography, glossary) (Fiction. 13-17)

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Starred review from March 12, 2018
Arcos (Out of Reach) depicts the horrors of the 1990s Bosnian conflict in this powerful novel that juxtaposes images of the war against a fictionalized terrorist attack in Rhode Island. The story begins in the present day with teenage Zara bemoaning the fact that she feels distant from her mother, Nadja. Zara knows that Nadja was a victim of the Bosnian war, but many questions remain unanswered. What are the nightmares that make Nadja scream out in the night? Why does she never speak of her wartime experiences? Then Zara experiences a trauma firsthand. While at the farmers’ market with her mother and brother, a bomb goes off, leaving both children injured and their mother in a coma. Now, facing the possibility that Nadja may never awaken, Zara feels a pressing need to understand her family history. Arcos alternates Zara’s battle with PTSD and her quest to find clues to her mother’s past with the story of young Nadja’s struggles to survive after her entire family is killed by Serbs. The result is a multilayered view of tragedy and its repercussions. Ages 12–up. Agent: Kerry Sparks, Levine Greenburg Roston Literary Agency.

April 1, 2018

Gr 9 Up-Seventeen-year-old Zara has a difficult relationship with her immigrant mother, Nadja, who is judgmental of the hobby Zara hopes to make a career: photography. Zara knows that her mother survived the horrific ethnic cleansing of her own Muslim people during the Bosnian War, but her mother isn't very open about that part of her past. Zara feels farther from her mother than ever when they become the victims of a present-day, nation-wide terrorist attack that injures Zara and puts Nadja into a coma. From this point forward, both women's stories are told in alternating chapters: Zara's unfolds chronologically during the weeks of their recoveries, while Nadja's bounces between 1992 and 1999 as she experiences life and survival before, during, and after a global humanitarian crisis. While Nadja lays near-lifeless in the hospital, Zara discovers pieces of the past her mother has kept to herself for so long. Letters and photographs (both found in her mother's box and her own) connect the past and the present for Zara, along with the help of a boy she meets visiting her mother in the hospital. While complicated in plot and often heavy in descriptions, this work will be enjoyed by persistent readers who will hopefully walk away with the rich sense of unity that spans time, religion, culture, and love so expertly threaded within the narrative. VERDICT Filled with imagery, language, and situations often found during times of war and suffering, this historical-meets-present title is best suited for thoughtful readers-Brittany Drehobl, Morton Grove Public Library, IL

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Starred review from March 15, 2018
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Zara just doesn't get her mother; the woman lives by rules that make no sense to Zara. She knows that her mother suffered greatly in her native Bosnia, where she lost her entire family. But her reticence on the subject feels like one more way to shut out her daughter. Everything changes, however, when terrorists bomb the farmer's market, injuring Zara and leaving her mother in a coma. Desperate for connection in the wake of the attack, Zara discovers a box containing photographs and clues from her mother's teenage years, when she was struggling to survive in war-ravaged Bosnia. Nadja's story is revealed in pieces as Zara struggles with her own recovery. The descriptions of Nadja's days in Sarajevo are brutally realistic: there was no food or heat, and snipers took shots at anyone venturing into the streets. Arcos masterfully shows how teens in this terrible place have the same desires and dreams as twenty-first-century teens, and Zara's story rings equally true. After the bombing, Zara is changed in a fundamental way. She now craves meaning, which is part of her attraction to Joseph, a boy who is exploring religion as a way to cope with his own demons. This complex, compelling story takes readers on a deep dive below the surface, exposing both the fragility of life and the redemptive bonds of love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)