The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet: A Memoir of Visegrad, Bosnia

Great book! Would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in this subject. Very educational to people who want to know more about the pre-war lifestyle and culture of the ex-yu! Warning: not for someone who cannot handle the dark side of humane nature! it is a book about war after all.

This is the best account of the effects of war on a normal civilian that I have ever read and I've read hundreds of accounts on war! While "Anne Frank's Diary" and other accounts might be more detailed or more literary, they often fail to set the stage moving from "normality" to the realities of war and don't capture the many varied experiences of civilians such as staying in your home, fleeing as a refugee, and undergoing a siege unlike "River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet." This is a first person memoir of Jasmina Dervisevic-Cesic and her experiences immediately before and during the Bosnian War. The tone of the writing is matter-of-fact and does not sensationalize; it is this matter-of-fact tone that gives so much power to the story as it describes the disintegration of Jasmina's town and life. If it used sensationalized facts or powerful rhetoric it might be considered more literary, but it would lose much of its value as a dispassionate account. The story begins when Jasmina is 15 in the peaceful town of Visegrad, Bosnia. Moslems and Serbs live peacefully together. Her life was that of a typical teenage girl concerned with school, boys, family, and friends. She meets her future husband, Suljo, while swimming in the Drina River flowing through Visegrad. Suljo serves his conscription time in the Yugoslav Army and then leaves for work in France. During this time, the peaceful world of Visegrad begins to unravel. Like all wars, it begins in small ways and in some distant place. First Jasmina notices more Chetniks, radicalized Serbs, on the streets of Belgrade while visiting there - it unsettled her but was of no major concern to her life. Then Croatia declares independence and the Yugoslav Army goes to war to prevent their independence. Jasmina describes it as a "television war" and again it didn't seem to have a direct impact on her life in Visegrad. This is so typical of normal human behavior that they aren't concerned with things that don't directly affect them and it gives Jasmina's account credibility. Then boys from Visegrad serving in the Yugoslav Army begin to lose contact with family members, and the people in the town become involved. Serbs in the town send their children to Serbia or leave as a family altogether. But life goes on for most people - friends got married and parties were important. Suljo returns home from France and proposes to Jasmina. They get married and honeymoon in Sarajevo. Their happy new marriage life is interrupted when the Yugoslav Army and Serb militia begin shooting into a nearby village. Now, war is something that can't be ignored. Young men leave to help the village and refugees flee it. In one event after another, Jasmina shares her experiences of war; horrors, amazing kindnesses, fear, continual uncertainty, rumors flying all over the place, sacrifices, sudden death, desperate shortages of everything from food to electricity, and personal tragedy. She details her experiences in Sara

"How do we suvive the things that happen to us, these horrible things? By taking this moment, and then the next one, one at a time. By telling our truth without being broken to pieces by the difference between what our lives once were and what they had become."--from "The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet"This memoir of a Bosnian girl who comes of age during the disintegration of Yugoslavia is a fascinating story but, even more, it is an important piece of literature, in the tradition of Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl, and When Heaven and Earth Changed Places. The telling is simple and straightforward, but the messages, like the war itself, are complex. Through Jasmina's eyes, we see not only the loss and horror of war, but we feel the spirit of cooperation fostered by it, and the live-in-the-moment adrenaline rush. We watch children who grew up as friends turn away from each other to take sides based on hostilities perpetrated long before they were born. We view both the Serbs and the UN peacekeeping forces as obstacles in a very real human "video game." We see the frustration of those who must deal with unnecessary bureaucracy in order to secure necessary help and care. We witness wartime medical care at its most barbaric, and are given rare insight into the human ability to survive. The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet is an excellent depiction of an ordinary life blown apart by political and cultural violence. We in the US can talk political theory and debate the merits of waging war while we relax, clean, warm and well-fed, in front of the TV, at a safe distance from the consequences of what governments actually do. But only those who live the disruption, confusion and destruction, the great discomfort and crushing losses and, yes, the fierce comradery, know what war really is. Jasmina Dervisevic-Cesic gives us a gift of first-hand witness; she re-lives her experience on paper here for us with enormous bravery, a measure of anger, and a river of hard-won wisdom. This is history at ground level, immediate and affecting. It is a clear-eyed look into the worst, and the best, of human nature. Teenagers will relate to it because of the youth of the narrator, but readers of all ages will gain a fresh, insider perspective into the surprisingly familiar culture and baffling political morass that was the dying Yugoslavia. Jasmina tells her truth with skill; we stand to gain much, on a human scale, by listening.Susan O'NeillAuthorDon't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and even when I wanted to put it down, because it was so troubling to read, I couldn't do so because I was quickly engulfed by the story. I was hooked immediately by the clear pure voice of Jasmina. As she describes her home town and her life there before the war, I was struck by the sereneness of the town and the love and sense of belonging everyone who lived there had. The nightmare that followed is unbelievable. To read a first person account tears out your heart, but you have to keep reading to find out how it ends.At the end, I felt outraged at what happened but privileged to have been given this piece of understanding into a situation, which I hope never to encounter.

I bought the book expecting to learn about how war effects civilians but I ended up with so much more. This book is an incredible inspiration for how life's trials can be overcome. The story about a girl coming of age in Bosnia during the conflict is both sweet, alarming, and absolutely captivating. I couldn't put it down and read it in one night. I recommend this book to anyone, not only as a gripping and excellent read, but as an inspiration that will last a lifetime.