The Goat Bridge: A Novel

An American photographer in the war-torn Balkans struggles to rebuild his shattered life after the kidnapping of his son Photographer Stephen Brings is running from the past. He has fled a troubled relationship in Chicago and the painful memories of a kidnapped and still-missing son to travel in the Balkans during the Croatian War of Independence. While other foreigners are there to document the war, Stephen drifts through the ruined countryside without purpose, beset by the indescribable pain of losing his son, and, along with him, perhaps the very meaning of life. Holed up at night in the home of a Croatian smuggler, during the day Stephen wanders the bombed-out streets bringing oranges and water to a woman he has taken it upon himself to protect. Even with the daily horrors of war to erase his memories, Stephen is unable to resolve the trauma and sorrow of losing his son, and soon the war-torn landscape begins to mirror his own inner battles. After a return trip to Chicago fails to heal the rift between Brings and the mother of his child, Stephen returns to Sarajevo, and there he undertakes a project to document in images the Croatian people - not war images, but personal portraits of an embattled people. Stephen finds himself falling in love with a German journalist, who helps to heal his ailing body and to overcome his tragic loss. The Goat Bridge is a probing novel and a moving tale of loss, redemption, and the universal human search for meaning. In the end, it is also a love story - a tale of surrendering to one’s own and another’s heart.