Nine Lives and Counting

Maria Sharp was born Maria Zdenka Besan in Croatia in 1941, just after the Nazis had invaded her country, and as a young child she witnessed 'events that imprinted themselves upon her soul forever'. Many years later, having married an American and settled in the USA, she has written this book for her two grandchildren to explain her origins and tell her family's story. It paints a warm and moving picture of life in Croatia in the first half of the 20th century and describes the terrible effects on Maria's people of the German occupation, the subsequent period of communist control and the resulting second wave of destruction of Croatian homes, jobs and lives.