Description

SYNOPSIS OF: NO DISTANCE LEFT TO RUN GENRE: LITERARY WORD COUNT: 118261 BY DAVID WARD

What do you do when your fate, your life, your past catches up with you, when you can no longer run from the demons and the fears that haunt and follow you, from the consequences of your actions and inactions. When you finally have to turn and face your life, what do you see? What do you see looking back at you?

No Distance Left To Run is a novel comprising of three stories, three sets of characters, connected by a single traumatic incident.
Milan lives in Sarajevo, a year into the war, and the siege, that marked the dissolution of Yugoslavia. When his wife dies, he is forced to confront, through the memories they shared, the events that led their country to war, and the realities of what the war meant for the country and the city they had lived in together. Through his daily life, he looks at the things that made the city what it was, and their life in it, and asks whether he can survive, whether Sarajevo can survive, when so much had changed. As he finally lies dying on Sniper Alley, he knows that he would have survived, but, more importantly, he sees that Sarajevo, and, with it, Bosnia, would survive.
Lejla and Rajko find themselves in London, some years after the war, one struggling with the things he has done, the other with the things that were done to her. When Vlado, a gangster’s son, assaults a young woman, they are forced to work together to find him. As they become closer, feelings that both had forgotten begin to surface, but so too do the memories they had suppressed. When Lejla is captured, and tortured, Rajko kills Vlado to save her. Knowing that Vlado’s father would stop at nothing to kill them both, they go into hiding. As the danger around them increases, they are forced to confront the reason for the familiarity they feel for each other, and the terrible history they share, the memories of the rape camp where the two had once met. Finally confronting their past, Lejla finds the strength to forgive him, though he cannot forgive himself. Helping her to leave the country, and promising to follow her, Rajko stays to do the only thing he can to make her safe. He kills Vlado’s father, the man who had been his commander during the war. To finally answer for his crimes, Rajko throws himself into the Thames, to die. Lejla has returned to Croatia, and is trying to make a new life, still hoping that he had somehow survived, and would find his way to her. He stands outside her apartment, willing himself to knock on her door, and keep his promise.
Emina was an orphan of the Balkan Wars, abandoned as a baby in the hospital. Born with spina bifida, she was adopted by an English family, and raised in Manchester. Despite her beauty and her talent, she feels trapped by her condition, a feeling reinforced by the distance between her and Dan, and by his rejection of her. She has the same desires as anyone else, but, as his musical career takes off, even as they become closer, and he struggles with his priorities and with his feelings, she is left alone to deal with her own insecurities, her own questions, and to search for the strength in herself to finally leave the little girl behind, and see herself as a woman. As he becomes more unstable, he allows himself to follow his feelings for her, to be with her, but he stops being the man that she loved. Because of him, she finds the strength in herself to overcome her fears, but also the strength to let him go. Without her, Dan finally comes to see what he has lost, in Emina, and in himself, and resolves to straighten himself out, to be with her again. Afraid of rejection, he stays away, until she comes to him, and sees the man that she used to know. The man she loved.

Blending a story of loss, a story of revenge, and a coming of age tale, the novel is bound together by the three strong female protagoni