Katherine Paterson twines together the raw emotions and fear that plagued the United States after September 11, 2001, along with the plight for Muslim refugees from Milosevic's Kosovo who wound up in America at precisely that emotionally charged time. One such family took shelter in Paterson's home state of Vermont and inspired this moving novel. More akin to her Bread and Roses, Too than to her The Same Stuff as Stars, this story places the era and situation front and center. Kosovo's Plain of Dukagjin, where 11-year-old Meli Lleshi and her family make their home and which the storks fly over on their return from a winter in Africa, is as much a character as Meli's younger brothers, eight-year-old Isuf and six-year-old Adlil. Mehmet, Meli's 13-year-old brother, however, plays a larger role, especially when he goes missing after school one day. Paterson takes readers on the Lleshi family's journey to find a place of sanctuary after Milosevic's Serbian soldiers begin to wipe out the Albanian Kosovars, and Meli's parents, grateful to have Mehmet back after he is left for dead and saved by the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army), will do anything to keep their son from joining the KLA. But even after much of the danger has passed, they have no store or apartment to return to--everything was destroyed. As Meli's father, Baba, says, "War is madness. . . . It is the innocent who always suffer most." Even in America, where they decide to settle, new challenges await the Muslim family in the wake of 9/11. Paterson exposes the complexities of a war halfway around the globe and how its scars reach across an ocean. Young readers who did not know where Kosovo was before will not forget it after reading the Lleshis's remarkable story.--Jennifer M. Brown
