Never Throw Stones at God

All alone on a hillside stands an ancient, crumbling stone castle. Built in 1637 to protect its people, the castle has seen many families, invasions, and wars. The story starts in the safety of St. Louis, Missouri, where the narrator, a refugee from the Bosnian War, thinks back to his homeland and the castle fortress that was built for his ancestors. After being expelled from their village after the death of her husband, a woman named Fatima and her three sons—Mooyo, Halil, and Omer—set up camp on a hillside. She sends her oldest son, Mooyo, to a neighboring city with a few coins to buy a cow. After heroically defending the city from the bandits, Mooyo is rewarded beyond his family’s imagination. Their camp sits on a strategic spot that the Ottomans wish to guard from attacks. After hearing of Mooyo’s cleverness and bravery, they make him a prince, let him take an army of reformed bandits to serve him, and take him back to his mother and brothers, promising to build him a stone castle-fortress. And thus begins their adventures. The saga follows Prince Mooyo the First and his decedents who bear the same name up until Mooyo IX, who lives during the time of the Bosnian War. As many people during that time, Mooyo IX flees the only home he has ever known. He leaves with his wife and young son, but they have to abandon their car on the crowded streets. They become refugees of one camp and another. Although the camps were free from war, life has become unbearable, and Mooyo decides to risk escaping. The journey was illegal and dangerous to take his wife and son. After the false start, he makes it to Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, and then to Germany. With the help of numerous relatives, friends, and strangers, he makes it to freedom and peace. Then he struggles to establish a new life, learn a new language, and arrange illegal passage for his wife and son. Along the way, he must overcome villains, borders patrol, bureaucracy, and impatience. As the Bosnian War finally ends, he is reunited with his family, and they decide to immigrate to the United States. He continues to be haunted by nightmares of war and the loss of the land and castle that was so much a part of his being.