"Refugees from the Bosnian War, Lazar's family flees the Siege of Sarajevo and arrives in Winnipeg in the early 1990s. Despite various mini dramas unfolding at home, the bitter cold and a strange city and country, Lazar manages to find a place for himself at school, largely by making friends with Elle, a sassy, outspoken girl who divides her time between living with her hoarder mother and her hippie father, Jimmy, who lives in British Columbia. But...

In 1991, ten-year-old Nadja begins writing to her cousin in Minnesota, and over the next four years, her letters reveal the horrors of war in this former republic of Yugoslavia, while her cousin's letters give Nadja and her family some hope.