Crow Blue

I was thirteen. Being thirteen is like being in the middle of nowhere. Which was accentuated by the fact that I was in the middle of nowhere. In a house that wasn't mine. in a city that wasn't mine, in a country that wasn't mine, with a one-man family that, in spite of the intersections and intentions (all very good), wasn't mine.
When her mother dies, thirteen-year-old Vanja is left with no family and no sense of who she is, where she belongs, and what she should do. Determined to find her biological father to fill the void that has so suddenly appeared in her life, Vanja decides to leave Rio de Janeiro to live in Colorado with her stepfather, a former guerrilla notorious for his violent past. From there she goes in search of her biological father, tracing her mother's footsteps and gradually discovering the truth about herself.
Rendered in lyrical and passionate prose, Crow Blue is a literary road trip through Brazil and America, and through dark decades of family and political history.

Brazilian author Adriana Lisboa was born in Rio de Janeiro and currently resides in the United States. She has published eleven books, among which six novels, a collection of short stories and prose poetry, and books for children. Her work has been translated into English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Swedish, Romanian and Serbian, and will shortly appear also in Arabic.
Among her honors are the José Saramago Award for her novel Symphony in White, a Japan Foundation Fellowship her novel Hut of Fallen Persimmons, a fellowship from the Brazilian National Library, and the Newcomer of the Year Award from the Brazilian section of IBBY (the International Board on Books for Young People) for her book of poetry for children, Língua de trapos (A Tongue Made of Scraps). In 2007, Hay Festival/Bogota World Book Capital selected her as one of the thirty-nine highest profile Latin American writers under the age of thirty-nine.
With degrees in Music and Literature, Adriana Lisboa performed as a Brazilian Jazz singer while living in France, and subsequently worked as a music teacher in Rio. She also translated into Portuguese such authors as Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Maurice Blanchot.