Bullet Collection

Passionate lyrical and deeply humane this tale of two sisters caught in a war without end moves effortlessly through space and time . . . an astonishing first novel. ―Andrea BarrettMarianna watches her older sister Alaine collect the detritus of war from around Beirut―bullets shrapnel grenades a gas mask. These objects some taken from dead bodies catalogue Alaine''s retreat into a dangerous depression. As the family struggles to endure the daily violence of the Middle East conflict it is Marianna who becomes her older sister''s keeper watching for any signal that might trigger one of Alaine''s frequent grim excavations. But once the family escapes to America Alaine''s newfound contentment is as alien to Marianna as her madness once was. As Marianna longs for her beloved war-torn home she struggles to understand that now she is the difficult sister.In lyrical dreamlike prose The Bullet Collection by Patricia Sarrafian Ward mines both the stunning exotic landscape of Beirut and the pure defiant landscape of a child''s heart and shows how war leaves its indelible scars on both.