In a town shattered by prejudice, two girls forge a friendship that defies the ravages of war...
Seka and Zora have been inseparable, growing up as neighbours and best friends in the once peaceful town of Srebrenica. But as Yugoslavia begins to splinter and nationalism sweeps through the region, their town is torn apart by prejudice and violence. Suddenly, Seka and Zora find themselves on opposite sides of a brutal conflict, their friendship strained by the rising tide of hatred. As the horrors of war descend upon Srebrenica, Seka and Zora's bond is tested like never before. With nationalist propaganda fueling distrust and fear, the streets they once played in become battlegrounds. Amidst the chaos, they must navigate a world where friends can become enemies overnight. Will their friendship endure the storm of war and prejudice, or will it be shattered by the forces tearing their town apart? Please be aware that trigger warnings could contain spoilers and so I have included them on my themes page For publicity information please view Time Kneels Between Mountains Media Kit below |
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Media Kit
Title: The Tree That Stood Still
Pub date: 1 November 2025
ISBN Print: 9781922871558
ISBN Ebook: 9781922871541
Genre: Historical Mystery
#TheTreeThatStoodStill #SekaTorlakSeries #HistoricalFiction #BosnianWar #WarAndFriendship #SrebrenicaStories #YoungAdultBooks #OwnVoicesBooks #AmraPajalic
Lead in post
What happens when war redraws the lines between love and hate, neighbours and enemies, childhood and survival?
In The Tree That Stood Still, award-winning author Amra Pajalić delivers a powerful and deeply moving story of two young girls—one Bosnian, one Serb—whose friendship is tested when their once-peaceful town is torn apart by conflict.
Bound by shared dreams beneath their beloved meeting place, the tree they called Baldie, the girls once swapped love stories and imagined futures. But when war explodes across their homeland, families, neighbours, and lifelong friends are suddenly divided along ethnic lines. The two girls must fight to hold on to their bond against the weight of history, prejudice, and violence.
At its heart, this novel explores how ordinary people—friends, families, neighbours—can be turned against one another, and how loyalty, love, and courage can offer a glimmer of hope in the darkest times.
Amra Pajalić, acclaimed for her YA fiction and memoir, brings her signature sensitivity and sharp insight to a story rooted in her own Bosnian heritage. The Tree That Stood Still is both a coming-of-age novel and a searing reminder of how war reshapes communities—and how friendship can defy even the most brutal divisions.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Zora and I ran up the hill behind our houses, my calves aching, my chest tight as the hill got steeper and steeper. Zora was fleet-footed before me, taking long strides thanks to her tall and lean frame. She was a runner with much better stamina. She disappeared among the foliage while I laboriously continued my trek, perspiring from the warmth of the spring sunshine. As I climbed, I eyed the trees for movement.
“Rah,” Zora jumped out from a bush and screamed.
I didn’t flinch.
I smiled as she screamed in frustration behind me. She loved scaring me, but after being best friends for most of our fifteen years she was losing her touch, or maybe I was building up a better tolerance.
We reached the clearing where we played, near our favourite tree. As I ran, my coin necklace bounced hard against my collarbone. I quickly tucked it under my shirt. Babo bought me the Tito coin at a market in Vukovar. They made the silver coin to commemorate President Tito’s death on the 4th of May 1980, which was also the date of my birthday, even though I was born three years before Tito died. I used to carry the coin in my pocket, but one day, I lost it at school. After spending all of lunch looking for it so my brother made a hole in the coin and threaded a necklace that Mama gave him.
I reached Ćelo in record time, panting from running up the hill. Ćelo, meaning baldie, was a birch tree that Zora named because the branches were so full and luscious, using the nickname her father used for his work buddy at the mines. When Zora asked her father why he was called his workmate Ćelo even though he had a full head of hair, her father told her that his work friends thought it was funny to give a nickname that was opposite to his actual trait.
I sat on a log from a fallen branch and got my breath back, while Zora bounded in carrying a wild white orchid in her hand, her blue skirt swaying, her short ash-blonde hair glinting in the dappled sunshine breaking through the birch trees around us. She handed me the white flower. It contrasted with the olive-tinged skin of my hand, an inheritance from my Ottoman ancestry. I smelled its sweet scent and tucked it into her hair above her ear as her brilliant blue eyes watched me.
Zora and I stubbornly stuck together, excluding the other children in our neighbourhood who tried to play with us. Among the trees and thickets of blackberries, we took turns pretending to be Robin Hood and Marion or Jasmine and Aladdin when we were younger. We swapped the male and female roles, even though Zora made a better boy with her short blonde hair and her peaches and cream skin, while my long brown hair suited the role of a maiden in distress. The story always ended with the lovers being reunited, Zora and I ending our game in a lip-smacking kiss, keeping our lips closed. The other children always tried to change our games into war games, or hide and seek, but we were only interested in our romance stories.
Author Bio:
Amra Pajalić is an award-winning author, an editor and teacher who draws on her Bosnian cultural heritage to write own voices stories for young people, who like her, are searching to mediate their identity and take pride in their diverse culture.
Amra Pajalić won the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature's Civic Choice Award for her debut novel The Good Daughter, now re-released as Sabiha’s Dilemma. The anthology she co-edited, Growing up Muslim in Australia (Allen and Unwin, 2014, 2019), was shortlisted for the 2015 Children's Book Council of the year awards and her memoir Things Nobody Knows But Me (Transit Lounge, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 National Biography Award.
Social media handles
Website: http://www.amrapajalic.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amrapajalicauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmraPajalic
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@amrapajalic
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmraPajalicAuthor/
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/amra-pajalic
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3310015.Amra_Pajalic
Author Central: https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B005C8AIDY
Newsletter sign up (receive a FREE ebook copy of Suicide Watch – Story 1 in The Cuckoo’s Song and young adult novella The Climb) https://www.amrapajalic.com/my-newsletter.html
BUY LINKS:
Pishukin Press: https://www.pishukinpress.com/collections/sabihas-dilemma
Universal (Wide Print): https://books2read.com/sabihasdilemma
Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60843018-sabiha-s-dilemma
Please be aware that trigger warnings could contain spoilers and so I have included them on my themes page
Pub date: 1 November 2025
ISBN Print: 9781922871558
ISBN Ebook: 9781922871541
Genre: Historical Mystery
#TheTreeThatStoodStill #SekaTorlakSeries #HistoricalFiction #BosnianWar #WarAndFriendship #SrebrenicaStories #YoungAdultBooks #OwnVoicesBooks #AmraPajalic
Lead in post
What happens when war redraws the lines between love and hate, neighbours and enemies, childhood and survival?
In The Tree That Stood Still, award-winning author Amra Pajalić delivers a powerful and deeply moving story of two young girls—one Bosnian, one Serb—whose friendship is tested when their once-peaceful town is torn apart by conflict.
Bound by shared dreams beneath their beloved meeting place, the tree they called Baldie, the girls once swapped love stories and imagined futures. But when war explodes across their homeland, families, neighbours, and lifelong friends are suddenly divided along ethnic lines. The two girls must fight to hold on to their bond against the weight of history, prejudice, and violence.
At its heart, this novel explores how ordinary people—friends, families, neighbours—can be turned against one another, and how loyalty, love, and courage can offer a glimmer of hope in the darkest times.
Amra Pajalić, acclaimed for her YA fiction and memoir, brings her signature sensitivity and sharp insight to a story rooted in her own Bosnian heritage. The Tree That Stood Still is both a coming-of-age novel and a searing reminder of how war reshapes communities—and how friendship can defy even the most brutal divisions.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Zora and I ran up the hill behind our houses, my calves aching, my chest tight as the hill got steeper and steeper. Zora was fleet-footed before me, taking long strides thanks to her tall and lean frame. She was a runner with much better stamina. She disappeared among the foliage while I laboriously continued my trek, perspiring from the warmth of the spring sunshine. As I climbed, I eyed the trees for movement.
“Rah,” Zora jumped out from a bush and screamed.
I didn’t flinch.
I smiled as she screamed in frustration behind me. She loved scaring me, but after being best friends for most of our fifteen years she was losing her touch, or maybe I was building up a better tolerance.
We reached the clearing where we played, near our favourite tree. As I ran, my coin necklace bounced hard against my collarbone. I quickly tucked it under my shirt. Babo bought me the Tito coin at a market in Vukovar. They made the silver coin to commemorate President Tito’s death on the 4th of May 1980, which was also the date of my birthday, even though I was born three years before Tito died. I used to carry the coin in my pocket, but one day, I lost it at school. After spending all of lunch looking for it so my brother made a hole in the coin and threaded a necklace that Mama gave him.
I reached Ćelo in record time, panting from running up the hill. Ćelo, meaning baldie, was a birch tree that Zora named because the branches were so full and luscious, using the nickname her father used for his work buddy at the mines. When Zora asked her father why he was called his workmate Ćelo even though he had a full head of hair, her father told her that his work friends thought it was funny to give a nickname that was opposite to his actual trait.
I sat on a log from a fallen branch and got my breath back, while Zora bounded in carrying a wild white orchid in her hand, her blue skirt swaying, her short ash-blonde hair glinting in the dappled sunshine breaking through the birch trees around us. She handed me the white flower. It contrasted with the olive-tinged skin of my hand, an inheritance from my Ottoman ancestry. I smelled its sweet scent and tucked it into her hair above her ear as her brilliant blue eyes watched me.
Zora and I stubbornly stuck together, excluding the other children in our neighbourhood who tried to play with us. Among the trees and thickets of blackberries, we took turns pretending to be Robin Hood and Marion or Jasmine and Aladdin when we were younger. We swapped the male and female roles, even though Zora made a better boy with her short blonde hair and her peaches and cream skin, while my long brown hair suited the role of a maiden in distress. The story always ended with the lovers being reunited, Zora and I ending our game in a lip-smacking kiss, keeping our lips closed. The other children always tried to change our games into war games, or hide and seek, but we were only interested in our romance stories.
Author Bio:
Amra Pajalić is an award-winning author, an editor and teacher who draws on her Bosnian cultural heritage to write own voices stories for young people, who like her, are searching to mediate their identity and take pride in their diverse culture.
Amra Pajalić won the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature's Civic Choice Award for her debut novel The Good Daughter, now re-released as Sabiha’s Dilemma. The anthology she co-edited, Growing up Muslim in Australia (Allen and Unwin, 2014, 2019), was shortlisted for the 2015 Children's Book Council of the year awards and her memoir Things Nobody Knows But Me (Transit Lounge, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 National Biography Award.
Social media handles
Website: http://www.amrapajalic.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amrapajalicauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmraPajalic
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@amrapajalic
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmraPajalicAuthor/
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/amra-pajalic
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3310015.Amra_Pajalic
Author Central: https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B005C8AIDY
Newsletter sign up (receive a FREE ebook copy of Suicide Watch – Story 1 in The Cuckoo’s Song and young adult novella The Climb) https://www.amrapajalic.com/my-newsletter.html
BUY LINKS:
Pishukin Press: https://www.pishukinpress.com/collections/sabihas-dilemma
Universal (Wide Print): https://books2read.com/sabihasdilemma
Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60843018-sabiha-s-dilemma
Please be aware that trigger warnings could contain spoilers and so I have included them on my themes page
All Formats
ISBN |
Format |
Metric |
Imperial |
AUD |
USD |
Pages |
Date |
Value |
Ebook |
Value |
$4.99 |
$3.99 |
|
||
Value |
Paperback |
12.7 cm x 20.33 |
5 x 8 |
21.99 |
14.99 |
Value |
Value |
Value |
Hardcover |
13.97 cm x 21.59 |
5.5 x 8.5 |
34.99 |
24.99 |
Value |
Value |
Value |
Dyslexic edition |
22.9 x 15.24 |
6 x 9 |
29.99 |
19.99 |
Value |
Value |
Value |
Large Print |
22.86 x 15.24 |
6 x 9 |
49.99 |
39.99 |
Value |
Value |
Value |
Audio |
19.99 |
11.99 |
Value |
Value |
||
Value |
Audio AI |
4.99 |
3.99 |
|
Dyslexic Format Edition—printed in Dyslexic Open font in 14 point.
Large Print edition—printed in Large Print Open Sans No Italics font in 18 point font size.
Audiobooks AI—narrated by artificial intelligence using Google technology.
Audiobooks—narrated by performance narrators are also in process.
All books are also available in ebook, paperback and hardcover editions.
Large Print edition—printed in Large Print Open Sans No Italics font in 18 point font size.
Audiobooks AI—narrated by artificial intelligence using Google technology.
Audiobooks—narrated by performance narrators are also in process.
All books are also available in ebook, paperback and hardcover editions.
Questions and Answers
What inspired you to write the story of Seka and Zora?
I was inspired to write the story of Seka and Zora because I wanted to show the way that the break-up of Yugoslavia, and the nationalism and war that followed, tore apart friends and neighbours. Seka and Zora grew up as neighbours, their fathers were best friends, they celebrated all religious holidays together, but it was only when the war of 1992 broke out that they were identified as Serb and Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim), and supposed to see each other as enemies.
How did you develop the friendship between Seka and Zora
I wanted to show how Seka and Zora’s friendship was full of innocence and joy, and the war killed their innocence and ended their childhood. I also wanted to demonstrate the slow transition of prejudice and xenophobia brought about by the nationalistic propaganda as it filtered down from the adults into the schoolyard and then tore apart the town of Srebrenica.
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