“Catch the Rabbit” has been selected for the Indies Introduce debut picks of the season in the USA. Two panels of booksellers chose the Indies Introduce titles—10 adult and 10 children’s—as the best of the Summer / Fall 2021 debuts. Publishers offer special terms on these books just for participating indie booksellers.
Here is what the booksellers who nominated it had to say about the novel:
“Amazing, heart-wrenching, wondrous. A years-spanning story of an intense friendship and how history (you know, wars and stuff) weighs on people's bonds. More than a decade ago, Sara left Bosnia, never to return. Now, drawn back by a long-lost childhood friend, she’s on a road trip through the Western Balkans, her own past, and a landscape scarred by social and political violence. Bastašić wrestles questions of obligation and understanding into one woman’s deeply personal reckoning. What do we owe the people who’ve shaped us, who taught us how to feel alive? What we know (and un-know) of our friends, our histories, and ourselves? It’s a story of how a person can misunderstand her friend and herself and then be completely wrecked and rebuilt as she grows to a new understanding of her world. Prepare to be split in two. WOW!” -Chris Lee, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, WI
“Sara and Lejla remind us that slipping back into an old friendship is the most comfortable and impossible thing to do. With too much shared and not enough spoken, Catch the Rabbit holds the truth of how growing up and coming of age are two separate events, neither of which anyone really does with grace, or without pain.” -Carrie Koepke, Skylark Bookshop, Columbia, MO
“A compelling story about a complex female friendship. Two estranged friends go on a Thelma and Louise-style road trip across Bosnia in search of one friend's brother (presumed dead from the Bosnian War). For readers of Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet and any who has had intense childhood friendships.” -Audrey Huang, Belmont Books, Belmont, MA
Lana Bastašić 