sylvie nickels

When journalist Mike and his wife Sara decide to foster a 12-year-old Bosnian refugee, they have no premonition of the far-reaching consequences. Jasminka evolves from a traumatised child of the bitter ethnic conflicts of besieged Sarajevo into Minkie, an English schoolgirl-with-a-difference in a village in Middle England. She also becomes the daughter Mike has always wanted and Sara cannot have, and one of the excuses for Sara to resume an old affair. Mike’s assignments continue to take him to Bosnia and Serbia and he finds himself emotionally drawn into the conflict for reasons he could never have imagined and which have a profound effect on the deepening rift at home. As shifting international tensions are about to change the world forever, Minkie returns to Sarajevo to seek her roots and decide her future, just as Mike and Sara must decide on theirs in these early days of September 2001.