Author: Allen Eskens
Year published: 2025
Category: Adult fiction (mystery)
Pages: 320 pages
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): USA (MN) and Bosnia
Summary: Hana Babic is a quiet, middle-aged librarian in Minnesota who wants nothing more than to be left alone. But when a detective arrives with the news that her best friend has been murdered, Hana knows that something evil has come for her, a dark remnant of the past she and her friend had shared.
Thirty years before, Hana was someone else: Nura Divjak, a teenager growing up in the mountains of war-torn Bosnia—until Serbian soldiers arrived to slaughter her entire family before her eyes. The events of that day thrust Nura into the war, leading her to join a band of militia fighters, where she became not only a fierce warrior but a legend—the deadly Night Mora. But a shattering final act forced Nura to flee to the United States with a bounty on her head.
Now, someone is hunting Hana, and her friend has paid the price, leaving her eight-year-old grandson in Hana’s care. To protect the child without revealing her secret, Hana must again become the Night Mora—and hope she can find the killer before the past comes for them, too.
Review: I meant to read this book when it first came out, but never got around to it. My in-person book group chose it for this month, which made me happy that I'd finally read this one. I read it on my trip to the East Coast, and it made the flight from LA to Boston go quickly.
I have enjoyed the previous Allen Eskens novels that I've read: Saving Emma; Foresaken Country; and Nothing More Dangerous (links to my reviews). This novel, like his others, pulled me in right away. I loved the tie-in with the war in Bosnia, alternating chapters with the now in Minnesota. He was very clever in that he had the theme of the then and now mirror one another so the connection felt strong.
The chapters in Bosnia are not easy to read with the horrors in Srebrinica and other infamous locations where the Serbs raped and butchered the Bosnians. And, the Bosnian retaliations in the book are also violent.
They mystery is well done as the police and Hana try to figure out who has committed the murder, how it is tied to the Bosnian war, and if Hana is currently in danger.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Alphabet (Title)--Q
- Bookish--Librarian as main character
- Literary Escapes--Bosnia
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