Set in Bosnia, Croatia, and Germany before, during, and after the Yugoslav wars, Can I Borrow Some Bread? by Lana Mist is the haunting true story of Curly, a child forced by circumstances to see through the world’s lies and cruelty but unwilling to countenance or repeat them. In simple yet evocative prose, Mist provides a clear-eyed account of how to find and create love and kindness in the face life’s brutality.

Holly Welker, writer and editor

Abaut Can I Borrow Some Bread?

What does it take for a little girl who once had to knock on strangers’ doors to borrow bread to grow into a woman who can finally find peace with her past?

Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, Curly learns early that childhood does not always offer safety. Hunger, her mother's devastating illness, and the painful realities of family life shape a world in which she must learn to survive long before she understands what survival means.When war tears through her homeland in 1992, her life changes once again. What follows is a journey through displacement, marriage, motherhood, and the challenges of building a new life across borders.Years later, facing new struggles within her family and the uncertainty of her own future, Curly begins to look back at the little girl she once was.

Told with honesty, tenderness, and flashes of humor, Can I Borrow Some Bread? is a deeply personal memoir about the lasting echoes of childhood, the complexity of family love, and the possibility of finding peace without forgetting what came before.

It is a story not only of surviving, but of learning how to live.

Lana Mist