Running Away to Home: Our Family's Journey to Croatia in Search of Who We Are, Where We Came From, and What Really Matters

Jennifer Wilson is both factual and philosophical in Running Away to Home. Jennifer's family grew beyond blood. I recommend it for genealogists and anyone else who loves a mystery or a love story.

I really loved this book and I am not even Croation but my husband is so I married into that wonderful ethnic group. I found Jennifer's writing entertaining and informative.

Good read, great story. We visited Mrkopalj before reading the book. I wish we'd read the book first, it would have given more meaning to our visit.

Midwest-based travel writer Jennifer Wilson was searching for family roots in a somewhat quixotic search for simple answers to the classic challenge, "Life should be better than this." Settling into Iowa family life during the Great Recession, they realized their life was unsatisfying. It just didn't have the zest they imagined. So, she and her architect husband Jim decided to leave Iowa with their two young children and take a year off to live in her ancestral home of Croatia. This book covers a portion of that year, spending the summer living in the tiny village in the mountains of northern Croatia that her forebears had left behind for America.We have traveled in the region and can attest to its' beauty and wonderful people. But, like any people, you need meet them where they are, not where you want them to be. You are a guest in their home, and they are not Disney characters that present you with a crafted (un)reality. Jim and Jennifer had decidely different experiences. She resented how easily her husband became "one of the guys." He met the villagers seemingly without preconceived notions, and so fit in with the villagers with little difficulty. Jennifer, on the other hand, dealt with self-imposed boundaries. She was searching for answers to inner questions, and had much more difficulty. Her story is one of breaking through.The book is not a travel book, but a story of an internal journey. It is more of a search for inner understanding that, to me, makes it so much more real. Life doesn't present simple answers to the big questions. As in all good books, it leaves you wishing for that satisfying finale. Life resists being tied up with a nice bow, and so does Running Away to Home.

I kind of winced at the five opening words to Running Away to Home ("Dawn had not yet broken..." ) but I wisely ignored them and proceeded to let Jennifer Wilson unfold for me a grown-up-logic-defying, crazy-ass story about how her and her architect husband looked each other squarely in the eye, grasped their young children's hands, and jumped off a cliff. Her family, like so many others, was circling the drain of the daily grind of work/school/activities/bedtime/oh-my-god-will-someone-let-the-dog-out-already?! when Wilson felt a tug from the small collection of personal papers left to her by a recently deceased relative. That tug blossomed into a concrete plan to transplant for one year her family from her native Midwest to the small Croatian village of her ancestors. As in Croatia. From Des Moines, Iowa. And her husband agreed (I know!). So off they went and immersed themselves at different paces (husband Jim was an instant village pet) and levels in Mrkopalj (MER-koe-pie), a village soaked in rich history, food brought directly from field to table, and impossible-to-mask personalities. While searching for and finding her ancestors, and uncovering heartbreaking aspects of just how solidly difficult life was like for them, Wilson ultimately unveils facets more soul-shifting about herself and the relationships with her own immediate family. This journey was daring; the story is moving, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny thanks to Wilson's shining honesty and willingness to lay it bare for readers. In the end, I found myself looking inward, thinking of ways to make more "space" in my life for my family. And just so you don't get the wrong idea from my shabby Lifetime-esque description: they eat gross stuff like sheep brains and door mouse, lots of (all) of the villagers enjoy their alcohol, and the family may or may not have fallen off the side of a cliff.