Refugee Families

A masterful new novel completes an incomparable trilogy from J. M. Coetzee, Nobel laureate and two-time winner of the Booker Prize. In The Childhood of Jesus, Simòn found a boy, David, and they began life in a new land, together with a woman named Inès. In The Schooldays of Jesus, the small family searched for a home in which David could thrive. In The Death of Jesus, David, now a tall 10-year-old, is spotted by Julio Fabricante, the director of a local orphanage, playing football with his friends. He shows unusual talent.

Where to hide when there's nowhere left to run? Sandrine is asked to empty her late grandmother's house on a small island near the Normandy coast. She soon discovers that its elderly inhabitants haven't left the island since their arrival as children during World War II. Sandrine can tell they are terrified of someone, or something. Yet, they refuse to leave the island. What happened to the children from the holiday camp that was suddenly shut down in 1949? And who was Sandrine's grandmother really?

Family matriarch and Holocaust survivor Nora Wojnaswki is about to become the oldest woman in the world, and her family are determined to celebrate in style. Her great granddaughter, Debs, however, is not too happy about being left in charge of the party. It’s been a struggle to get the Rabbi to commit to a date and the large Wojnaswki clan can’t agree on what food should be served. Only, Debs’s problems are just beginning. Because Nora isn’t your average centenarian, and she has other ideas.

Six. That was the number of people killed every minute of every hour of the day for 100 days. The dead lay there mutilated, raped, disfigured, and dismembered. They were strewn across the African countryside, piled up in empty churches, and thrown in the lakes and rivers. Authored by one of the survivors, We Were Royal Refugees is the gripping and heart-wrenching true story of the horror, loss, forgiveness, and triumph of a family in one of the worst tragedies in modern history, the Rwandan genocide.

My story starts the day that my parents told me we must leave our adopted home forever. Because of the soldiers and the drought we barely had enough to eat and we could no longer stay to help the people in our village.

Packed with humor and heart, this debut middle grade series follows a girl finding her place in a brand-new world of private school and frenemies when her family moves to Hong Kong.

They call Gabriela "Tree Girl". Gabi climbs trees to be within reach of the eagles and watch the sun rise into an empty sky. She is at home among the outstretched branches of the Guatemalan forests. Then one day from the safety of a tree, Gabi witnesses the sights and sounds of an unspeakable massacre. She vows to be Tree Girl no more and joins the hordes of refugees struggling to reach the Mexican border. She has lost her whole family; her entire village has been wiped out.

Beautiful, sweet Shay and dark, dangerous Tanner don′t have a lot in common. He′s a suspicious big city cop come home to his family′s ranch and she′s a bleeding heart who works for a group that seeks out ranches to conserve after the owners have passed away. But the suspicious death of Tanner′s uncle at his ranch throws the two opposites together and sparks fly.

When guerrilla soldiers strike Santiago's village, they destroy everything in their path -- including his home and family. Santiago and his four-year-old sister escape, running for their lives. But the only way they can be truly safe is to leave Guatemala behind forever. So Santiago and Angelina set sail in a sea kayak their Uncle Ramos built while dreaming of his own escape.

A daughter and mother: two women miles, years, and dreams apart. One defies traditions and expectations. The other conforms to them, even in a new land. Their emotional distance grows while the daughter, now a wife and mother herself, comes to better understand the woman she’s become and why, as she ruminates on inherited trauma, the need to forgive, and the lengths she’ll go to free herself from the past.

In 1975, 13-year-old Lan Cao boarded an airplane in Saigon and got off in a world where she faced hosts she had not met before, a language she didn't speak, and food she didn't recognize, with the faint hope that she would be able to go home soon. Lan fought her way through confusion, and racism, to become a successful lawyer and novelist. Four decades later, she faced the biggest challenge in her life: raising her daughter, Harlan - half Vietnamese by birth and 100 percent American teenager by inclination.

One night Sophie and her parents are called to a hospital where Pedro, 6-year-old Mexican boy, is recovering from dehydration. Crossing the border into Arizona with a group of Mexicans and a coyote, or guide, Pedro and his parents faced such harsh conditions that the boy is the only survivor. Pedro comes to live with Sophie, her parents, and Sophie's Aunt Dika, a refugee of the war in Bosnia.

Victor Benucci and Madeline Falco have a story to tell. It begins with the death of Vic's father. It ends with the murder of Mad's uncle. The Hackensack Police Department would very much like to hear it. But in order to tell their story, Vic and Mad must focus on all the chapters in between.

Orphaned as a child, Fatimah Asghar grapples with coming of age and navigating questions of sexuality and race without the guidance of a mother or father. These poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while also exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests itself in our relationships. In experimental forms and language both lyrical and raw, Asghar seamlessly braids together marginalized people’s histories with her own understanding of identity, place, and belonging.

When Catharine H. Murray travels to a small town on the banks of the Mekong River to work at a refugee camp, she falls in love and marries a local man with whom she has three sons. When their middle son is diagnosed with cancer at age five, their pursuit of a cure takes them from Thailand to Seattle, before they eventually return to Thailand, settling on a remote mountaintop. Full of honesty and grace, Now You See the Sky allows the listener to witness the fathomless loss of a beloved child and learn how tragedy can transform us, expand our vision, and make us more fully alive.

How to Be a Refugee is Simon May’s gripping account of how three sisters – his mother and his two aunts – grappled with what they felt to be a lethal heritage. Their very different trajectories included conversion to Catholicism, marriage into the German aristocracy, securing ‘Aryan’ status with high-ranking help from inside Hitler’s regime and engagement to a card-carrying Nazi.

Now in an audio edition, this acclaimed memoir tells the unforgettable story of a young boy's journey from a refugee camp in Sudan to Chicago, where his family survived on welfare. Mawi followed his father's advice to "treat people...as though they were angels sent from heaven" and realized his dream of a full-tuition scholarship to Harvard University. Updated with 14 black-and-white photos and a new epilogue.

Beyond the Sand and Sea is an extraordinary and inspiring book for anyone searching for pinpricks of light in the darkness. Meticulously reported over three years, it reveals the strength of a family of Somali refugees who never lost faith in America - and exposes the broken refugee resettlement system that kept that family trapped for more than two decades and has turned millions into permanent exiles.

The timely, powerful memoir of a man unjustly charged with a crime for helping his relatives, I Just Wanted to Save My Family offers a heartrending window into the lives of those displaced by the Syrian civil war and a scathing critique of the often absurd, unfeeling bureaucracies that determine their fates.

Once again blending multiple story strands that transcend time and place, Grasshopper Jungle author Andrew Smith tells the story of 15-year-old Ariel, a refugee from the Middle East who is the sole survivor of an attack on his small village. Now living with an adoptive family in Sunday, West Virginia, Ariel's story of his summer at a boys' camp for tech detox is juxtaposed against those of a schizophrenic bomber and the diaries of a failed arctic expedition from the late 19th century.