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Remember Me

Perfect Paperback: 268 pages

 

At the innocent age of fifteen, Selma is just beginning to experience the power of her first love.

Unfortunately, living in Bosnia in 1992, Selma and her parents soon find themselves targets of the Bosnian War, and her father is arrested by the Serb Army and held for questioning. In an attempt to protect her daughter, Selma’s mother sends Selma to stay with her aunt, but that seems to be a mistake.

Days after arriving, the city is attacked, her family members are murdered before her eyes, and Selma is thrown into a concentration camp where she lives out her worst nightmare. After losing nearly all those she loves, being abused by those whom she once trusted, and witnessing prejudice at its ugliest, Selma isn’t sure she even wants to stay alive. Will Selma ever escape from room ten alive? And if she does, will her broken spirit ever recover?

Will she have any family to return to? Will she ever find love again?

Follow Selma’s journey through love, despair, hope, and peace in author Sanela Jurich’s Remember Me. Experience the brutality of the Bosnian Genocide, but see how God’s hand restores Selma’s life tenfold. Understand the courage it takes to face your attackers and relive the pain in the name of justice. Discover whether love sticky3can blossom from beneath the rubble of war.

ON SALE NOW.

 

Five stars from Readers’ Favorite:

5star-shiny-web

 

“Remember Me”, Johnny’s last words to Selma, is a novel that should be widely read and remembered. Unforgettable! –Readers Favorite

 

 

 

 

Five stars from The AudioBookReviewer along with a AudioBook Reviewer’s Choice Award:

 

“This book was awarded the AudioBookReviewer’s Choice Award as it was deemed to deserve a higher rating than the standard 5-star review allowed.” – Charla for AudioBookReviewer

 

 

“The author, Sanela Ramic Jurich paints a devastating picture of what Selma’s life becomes and the effects of war. She does not spare the listener with soft descriptions but rather gives them the bare truth of war and the horrible devastating actions of evil men subjecting women and children to extremes in suffering. Each character is skillfully built and developed into vivid people that are forced to suffer the most painful, devastating emotional and physical pain a human can endure. She eases her listeners into the story by showing us familiar acts and emotions – shopping, falling in love, family and friendships. The suddenness of the war reaching her hometown is unexpected and jarring and where she highlights the despair, pain, raw emotions, fear, and more. The love story between two people is amazing and provides hope and renewal. She brings the story full circle and demonstrates that healing is possible. The story flows steadily. Not only are her words powerful but her imagery is as well.

“I am thankful for the opportunity to hear and review this book.

“This book was awarded the AudioBookReviewer’s Choice Award as it was deemed to deserve a higher rating than the standard 5-star review allowed.” – Charla forAudioBookReviewer

 


From the Amazon reviews of Remember Me:     

“…This is a book that you will remember…”

“…but love overcame it all…”

“… Book that goes deep, deep into your heart and soul…”

“… a thought provoking book that will result in meaningful conversations with loved ones and friends…”


You can now hear this tender love story — set in a background of unrest and destruction — brought to life in an audiobook. The talented Lindsay Carrillo is narrating. 

Listen to the five minute sample here:


Remember Me

Remember Me – Second Edition

RememberMe3(sharper)At the innocent age of fifteen, Selma is just beginning to experience the power of her first love. Unfortunately, living in Bosnia in 1992, Selma and her parents soon find themselves targets of the Bosnian War, and her father is arrested by the Serb Army and held for questioning. In an attempt to protect her daughter, Selma’s mother sends Selma to stay with her aunt, but that seems to be a mistake.

Days after arriving, the city is attacked, her family members are murdered before her eyes, and Selma is thrown into a concentration camp where she lives out her worst nightmare. After losing nearly all those she loves, being abused by those whom she once trusted, and witnessing prejudice at its ugliest, Selma isn’t sure she even wants to stay alive.

Will Selma ever escape from room ten alive? And if she does, will her broken spirit ever recover? Will she have any family to return to? Will she ever find love again?

Follow Selma’s journey through love, despair, hope, and peace in author Sanela Jurich’s Remember Me. Experience the brutality of the Bosnian Genocide, but see how God’s hand restores Selma’s life tenfold. Understand the courage it takes to face your attackers and relive the pain in the name of justice. Discover whether love can blossom from beneath the rubble of war.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Unforgettable!” –Readers’ Favorite

Reviewed by Alice DiNizo for Readers’ Favorite

“Remember Me” is a thought-provoking novel about a dark time in recent history. The characters of Selma, her parents, grandparents, neighbors and friends who lost a lovely way of life are well-created and believable. The reader will agonize over the way innocent people were killed, their homes destroyed, their surviving families get grief-stricken but somehow carry on.
“Sjeti Me Se”, Johnny’s last words to Selma, is a novel that should be widely read and remembered. Unforgettable!
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“Amazing Book – A Must Read” -Vine Voice
Reviewed by Elaine Littau for Vine Voice
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“Remember Me” is a tender love story set in a background of unrest and destruction. Strong family connections are vital to survival in the circumstances of the characters. It is a thought provoking book that will result in meaningful conversations with loved ones and friends.
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Digital eBook Download $2.38

“Credible, Compassionate, and Courageous” -PDX Author

Reviewed by Gregory S. Lamb for PDX Author
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Be ready to cry when reading this exquisitely written story. War is a tragic scourge on humanity, damaging all that is good. The conflicts that occurred in the former Yugoslav Republic beginning with Slovenia, then Croatia, and into Bosnia Herzegovina ruined the lives of so many innocent people.

Jurich’s appropriately titled novel “Remember Me,” written in the first person is told from the point of view of protagonist Selma, who details what happened in the Balkans in the early 1990s. In particular, Selma’s story reads as a first hand account of an ordinary teenaged girl growing up in Bosnia. Her life and the lives of families around her were forever impacted by what happens when human beings intentionally mean harm.

In the story’s beginning, Selma shares her hopes and dreams. Hers were no different than any teenaged girl’s would be while coming of age, but in May of 1992 in Bosnia Herzegovina and the town of Prijedor, where Selma grew up, everything changed. People changed. The neighbors whom she trusted and went to school with took sides. People were abused and murdered for reasons that even they couldn’t understand.

When the conflict was over, the damage left in its path remained. “Remember Me” is an important story that fortunately at the end, left me with a warm feeling of hope. In the story, Selma makes decisions in her life that caused me to think differently about innocence and justice. This story needed to be told so that people throughout the world would know why it is so important to remember who gets hurt when government fails and nations fight. Readers will discover that Jurich writes with the credibility and authenticity of a person who witnessed and experienced what took place in the Balkan countries during the 1990s.

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“Touching” -Linsay and Jane’s Views and Reviews

Reviewed by MJ for Lindsay and Jane’s Views and Reviews
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Fifteen year old Selma is a normal teenager until her world is torn upside down when the Bosnian war begins. After her father is arrested her Mum sends Selma away to stay with her aunt in the hope she will be safe but the city is attacked and Selma watches helplessly as her family are murdered before her eyes. Dragged away to a concentration camp Selma suffers physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her captors and starts to believe death would be the easier option.

Sanela Ramic Jurich paints us a vivid picture of the horrors that took place during the Bosnian war allowing the reader to put themselves in the place of the characters, feeling their pain and terror. The book felt more like a biography than a novel so the depiction of the soldiers raping Selma and the other young girls was just one of many very disturbing scenes to read. A lot of the book has a darkness to it that I found very depressing, this is not the type of escapism I enjoy but it does help to occasionally read this type of book to remind ourselves how lucky we are to live in a peaceful time and place.

Selma realised that even in her darkest hour there was room for hope and eventually after she moved to America with her mother and son her dreams were realised. This turns out to be a sweet love story with a happy ending which helps to put to the back of our minds the horrible stuff that came at the start. I found this to be a very touching and heartfelt story. Kudos to the author for having the strength to draw on her own experiences to write this fictional book and remind us that every war has its share of innocent victims. Many of us choose to ignore or forget this fact in our need for `power’ or what we believe is `right’.

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“Very good and worth reading” -As I turn the pages

Reviewed by Bookangel for As I turn the pages
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Growing up in Bosnia, Selma was a typical teenager. She got good grades. For the most part, she was a dutiful daughter. She had a close-knit group of friends. Selma even had a boyfriend named Johnny, whom she tried to hide from her parents. But Selma’s adolescence took a horrific turn in 1992 — the start of the Bosnian War.
Remember Me by Sanela Ramic Jurich paints a horrific portrait of the war. People were raped, murdered, and tortured for no reason other than their religious beliefs or that they dared to talk back. I was 10 years old at the start of this war, old enough to remember this time period but honestly I don’t.
Selma should have been worried about teenage things, but slowly her way of life gets stripped away. The child of a Muslim-Catholic couple, Selma begins to worry that she and her family could lose their lives because of their beliefs. Friends you see on Monday could be gone on Tuesday. People have to leave their homes. People don’t know who they can trust. Your friend can quickly become the enemy. If you’re living in fear, are you really living at all? Selma can’t be normal anymore.
One by one members of her extended family are murdered, her father is arrested, and Selma herself is forced into a concentration camp. This is where the book became hard to read. Each day spent at the camp strips away at Selma’s soul. She is raped and tortured. She begins to see herself as damaged goods. If she survives, will Johnny still love her? Will her parents and family still love her? Will people know what happened just by looking at her? How can life ever go back to normal? I’m not going to give too much away, but Selma’s time in the concentration camp changed her life in many, many ways. If you want to know what I’m talking about, read the book!! Selma does survive. She reunites with her mother, and begins a new life in America.
Overall it was very good and worth reading.

From the Author

When I was fifteen years old, my whole life changed in a blink of an eye. The world I saw through my fifteen-year-old eyes was not innocent and pretty. It was filled with death, sadness, and hatred.
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Haunting from the Past high qualityHaunting from the Past

Sequel to Remember Me

Release Date: May 6, 2014                                                                     

As Selma tries to move on and recover from the horrible experience she had went through while living in Bosnia in 1992—where she and her parents had found themselves targets of the Bosnian war and where Selma had lost nearly all those she loved, was abused by those whom she once trusted, and had witnessed prejudice at its ugliest—the hell from which, she thought, she had finally escaped, found her in America and started haunting her again, reminding her that there was unfinished business some place else.

Digital eBook Download $2.38

Selma is a respected business woman, living in Chicago with the love of her life and their son. From the outside, it looks as if she finally has it all; career and family many people could only wish for. She thinks she is the luckiest person on the planet who had survived and escaped hell. One day she receives a phone call that forces her to go back to the place she had left behind almost two decades before. She had promised never to go back there, but now, she finds herself in a desperate situation from which there is no way out. She goes back to face her demons once again.

Will this trip finally, push Selma over the edge and be the end of her? Who knows, it might even help her get some kind of conclusion. Follow Selma’s journey back to the past through despair, hatred, love, hope, and peace in author Sanela Jurich’s Haunting from the Past.

Experience the brutality of the Bosnian Genocide and understand the courage it takes to face your attackers and relive the pain in the name of justice.

 

“In spite of the dark tales contained within the pages, Jurich manages to leave readers with the hope that deep wounds can still heal. Ms. Jurich’s writing craft is superb and is well matched to her riveting debut novel, Remember Me. Jurich doesn’t hold back anything.”

—Gregory S. Lamb
Author of The People in Between

“Sanela Jurich continues to captivate book lovers in this sequel to Remember Me. She shows readers that having the courage to confront a painful past can bring hope to an uncertain future.”

—Lisa Tortorello
Author of My Hero, My Ding

 

 

READ A  FREE EXCERPT HERE!

 

 


 

 FOREIGN EDITIONS

Sjeti me seSjeti me se

Bosanska verzija

Početkom njene nevine petnaeste godine, Selma tek počinje doživljavati čari svoje prve ljubavi. Nažalost, živeći u Bosni 1992, Selma i njeni roditelji uskoro postaju dio bosanskog rata i njenog oca, srpska vojska odvodi na ispitivanje. Sa namjerom da zaštiti svoju kćer, majka Selmu šalje kod tetke, što će se kasnije pokazati kao pogrešna odluka.

Nekoliko dana nakon što je tamo stigla, grad je napadnut, a članovi njene porodice su ubijeni pred njenim očima. Selma je bačena u koncentracioni logor, gdje proživljava svoje najgore noćne more. Nakon što je izgubila gotovo sve one koje je voljela, zlostavljana je od strane onih kojima je nekad vjerovala, svjedok je najružnijih predrasuda, ona više nije sigurna da li uopšte želi ostati živa.

Hoće li Selma uspjeti živa pobjeći iz sobe broj dest? I ako pobjegne, hoće li se njena slomljena duša ikada moći oporaviti? Hoće li imati porodicu kojoj će se moći vratiti? Hoće li ikada ponovno pronaći ljubav?

Pratite Selmino putovanje kroz ljubav, očaj, nadu i mir u knjizi Sjeti me se, autora Sanele Ramić Jurić. Doživite brutalnosti bosanskog genocida, ali i pogledajte kako Božja ruka Selmu desetostruko nagrađuje. Pokušajte razumjeti hrabrost koja je potrebna da se suočite sa svojim napadačima i ponovno proživite bol u ime pravde. Otkrijte da li ljubav može procvjetati ispod ruševina rata.

 

                                                                           


 

Pet zvjezdica od Readers’ Favorite:

5star-shiny-web“Sjeti me se”, Džanijeve zadnje riječi upućene Selmi, je novela koja bi se trebala obilno čitati i sjećati. Nezaboravno! Readers Favorite

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Šta drugi misle o Sjeti me se:

“…Ovo je knjiga koju ćete pamtiti…”

“…ali ljubav je sve prevazišla…”

“…knjiga koja će vam duboko ući u srce i dušu…”

“…knjiga koja izaziva duboka razmišljanja i razgovore sa voljenima…”

“Draga Sanela, ne znamo se osobno, ali sam se igrom slučaja domogla tvoje knjige. Sinoć sam je počela čitati poslije ponoći i evo sam na 15 poglavlju. U nadi da ću je još danas završiti. Hvala ti na radu, trudu, na želji da nemila događanja koja su zadesila naš narod, u tim preteškim vremenima ne padnu u zaborav. Da ne dopustimo da se žrtve i krvoloci svrstavaju u isti koš – bez obzira na religijska opredjeljenja, jer smo ipak svi samo ljudi…Hvala ti mnogo! S poštovanjem, Aida!”

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SADA I U SVIM KNJIŽARAMA:

Proganjanja COVERNastavak od Sjeti me se

PROGANJANJE IZ PROŠLOSTI

Kako Selma pokušava da krene dalje i da se oporavi od groznog iskustva kroz koje je prošla dok je živjela u Bosni 1992 – gdje su se ona i njeni roditelji našli na meti rata, gdje je Selma izgubila gotovo sve one koje je voljela, bila zlostavljana od strane onih kojima je nekad vjerovala, svjedočila najružnijim predrasudima – pakao iz kojeg, mislila je, napokon je pobjegla, pronašao ju je u Americi i počeo opet proganjati, podsjećajući je da negdje daleko ima nedovršen posao.

Selma je cijenjena poslovna žena koja živi u Čikagu s ljubavi svog života i njihovim sinom. Izvana, izgleda kao da konačno ima sve, karijeru i obitelj mnogi bi mogli samo poželjeti. Mislila je da je najsretnija osoba na planeti koja je preživjela pakao iz kojeg je napokon pobjegla.

Jednog dana ona prima telefonski poziv koji je prisiljava da se vrati u mjesto koje je napustila prije gotovo dva desetljeća. Obećala je da se nikad tamo neće vratiti, ali sada, ona se nalazi u očajnoj situaciji iz koje nema izlaza. Odlazi nazad da se još jednom suoči sa svojim demonima.
Hoće li je ovaj put napokon gurnuti sa litice i dokrajčiti je? Ko zna, možda će joj čak i pomoći da dobije neke odgovore.

Pratite Selmino putovanje u prošlost kroz očaj, mržnju, ljubav, nadu i mir u Proganjanja iz prošlosti, autora Sanele Ramić Jurich.
Doživite brutalnost bosanskog genocida i shvatite kakva je hrabrost potrebna da se suočite sa svojim napadačima i ponovo proživite bol u ime pravde.


“Uprkos mračnim pričama koje su sadržane unutar ovih stranica, Jurić je uspjela ostaviti čitaoce sa nadom da duboke rane ipak mogu zarasti. Pisanje gospođe Jurić je izvanredno i dobar je meč njenoj prvoj noveli, Sjeti me se. Jurić ništa ne pridržava.”

—Gregory S. Lamb
Autor od The People in Between

 

“Sanela Jurić nastavlja očaravati ljubitelje knjiga u ovom nastavku od Sjeti me se. Ona pokazuje čitaocima da ako imaju dovoljno hrabrosti da se suoče sa bolnom prošlošću, to im može donijeti nadu u neizvjesnoj budućnosti.”

—Lisa Tortorello
Autor od My Hero, My Ding


 

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Remember Me

 Remember Me

 Author: Sanela Ramic Jurich
 Genre: Historical Fiction

 

Discover whether love can blossom from beneath the rubble of war. More info →

 

 


 
Sjeti me se

 Sjeti me se

 Author: Sanela Ramic Jurich
 Genre: Historical Fiction

 

Bosnian Edition More info →