Guernica Editions
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Summer of the Dancing Bear
Guernica Editions, Spring 2012
256 pages
Trade Paperback
ISBN13: 9781550713619
ISBN10: 1550713612
English
$15.00 Canada, $15.00 US
Read more from the Essential Prose Series
Summer of the Dancing Bear is a historical novel about the "rite of passage"of 14-year-old Kata befriended by a gypsy clan. The novel explores Kata's search for a viable identity, acceptance of death, and understanding of love, through her journey of solving the mystery of the disappearance of a two-year-old girl that occurred when Kata was eight years old. The story evolves within a village community polarized by racial intolerance between the villagers and the gypsies, where she grows up under the tutelage of her grandmother. It is set in 1960s Yugoslavia, still reeling from the horrors of the Second World War.
Bianca Lakoseljac's debut novel, The Summer of the Dancing Bear, is a mesmerizing melange of love story and mystery, as young protagonist Kata explores the unfamiliar world of the gypsy tribe that has befriended her and embarks on a quest to discover the fate of a neighbour's missing child. Memory and magic play their roles until the shocking denouement that reveals Kata's own family secrets and forever alters her perceptions of life as she once knew it. Engaging and original, the novel fuses history, myth, and tradition in a whimsical literary voice that reminds us that the complex and innocent humanity in us is too often haunted by human tragedy.
Elizabeth Abbott
Reviews
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Unabridged Chick reviews Summer of the Dancing Bear
Unabridged Chick Book Blog - August 28, 2012
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Karen's Korner reviews SUMMER OF THE DANCING BEAR
Karen's Korner - August 4, 2012
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LucyBird's Book Blog reviews SUMMER OF THE DANCING BEAR
LucyBird Books - August 3, 2012
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Basso Profundo blog reviews SUMMER OF THE DANCING BEAR
Luke Sherwood, Basso Profundo - July 25, 2012
Books by Bianca Lakoseljac
