Bluebird

For Vesna Maric, the war begins when the machine-gun fire in the distance sounds like a sewing machine. As it comes closer, her family's anxiety grows, prompting them to send her and her sister to Britain via bus. The Bosnian women who board the bus for the four-day trip are in turmoil: Gordana, a fifty-two-year-old who looks like Xena the Warrior Princess, reveals through tears that she is pregnant and must leave her husband in Bosnia; their only English-language interpreter descends into a nervous breakdown; and the weak English coffee only compounds Maric's confusion and exhaustion. They arrive in the vivid green of England's Lake District, greeted by volunteers who carry naive ideas about refugee behavior and appearance. Unbeknownst to the altruistic welcoming party, Maric and her fellow travelers are accustomed to a comfortable, middle-class life, and their new refugee status comes as a shock. Maric's humor and tenderness carry the reader through her love affair with a local boy and her eventual moves to larger towns. Interwoven are stories of other refugees--stories of love, escape, and burdens of the refugee label. Eventually, Maric returns to Bosnia, visits the ruined streets of her town, and finds that her old slippers, still by her bed, no longer fit.