Sing to Me

This is a story of confronting reality, how to forgive, and be forgiven, reclaiming life and rediscovering the soul’s song.

On every mountain a melody can be heard, each melody is unique. Even on two sides of the same mountain range, the songs will differ, they will not share the same key nor will their words share the same history.

1980. Pero is a Croatian immigrant, father, husband, philanderer, who drinks too much and gambles the family’s income. No longer a brilliant musician he now plays only for himself in the cellar of his house deep in the suburbs of Western Sydney with a bottle of rajika within arm’s reach. When Yugoslavia’s President Tito dies and his mother’s health fails, Pero feels he must return ‘home’. He touches down in Zagreb to one of the country’s most bitter winters. Traversing villages and cities hushed by the communist regime, Pero is compelled to face a past that he has tried to forget. His father won’t talk to him; he can’t find the best friend he betrayed. He feels the scars of the people living with the memory of dictatorship, Croatian nationalism, and years of deprivation …

From the opening pages Jelena has woven together the reconciliation of family legacy, history and culture with deftness, profound humanity, humour and empathy. It is the story of reclaiming life and heritage, and how to belong, how to live, in two countries at once.