The first chapter of THE QUIET LIBRARIAN is called “Minnesota, After Everything.” What we are about to see takes place in the present following a prior tumultuous event that sets the narrative rolling forward.

We visit a quiet library in the vicinity of St. Paul and meet the forty-something librarian who has been nicknamed “sweater lady” because she is never seen without her long-sleeve cardigans in the workplace. She is Hana Babic, but that is not her real name. When a man calling himself David Claypool pays her a visit at work, it will not only change her entire world but bring back a past she had hoped would remain hidden.

"Allen Eskens is such a gifted writer, and all of his books succeed at doing their part in explaining the human condition through authentic characters whose feelings ring true. THE QUIET LIBRARIAN is no exception..."

Claypool is a police detective, and he is seeking out Hana because she was listed as the only close friend to Amina, who regrettably has been found dead. Foul play is suspected as it appears she was tied up in her home and somehow got free, only to fall to her death from her own balcony. Neighbors reported seeing a man there shortly after this tragic incident. Her grandson, Dylan, was on his way home from school as Amina was his sole guardian after his mother’s untimely passing.

Not only does Detective Claypool want to get some answers from Hana about her deceased friend, he also must inform her that she was named as Dylan’s new guardian in Amina’s will.

This narrative is interspliced with chapters set in the far past in Bosnia. It begins with Hana’s birth in 1977. Born Nura Divjak, she lives with her parents and younger brother. Unfortunately, as we approach the early 1990s, the horrors of the Bosnian Serbian War reach even their mountain hideaway, and the fact that they’re Muslim makes them targets for death at the hands of their enemies. Rumor has it that the female Muslims who are captured are subjected to rape and torture before losing their lives.

Nura is brought directly back to the worst moment of her life when she witnesses her entire family murdered as she hides in a crawlspace of the home that would be burned to the ground. She escapes, but not before sustaining terrible burns that will forever scar her arms. She never forgets the men who savagely killed her loved ones --- including the rape and murder of her mother in their kitchen --- and vows to die getting her revenge.

We get to experience what happens next to Nura in a progressive narrative that finds her teaming up with some rebel soldiers on her side. She satisfies her promise and, while briefly caught by enemies, bonds with another captured woman. Amina becomes her companion in an escape to the United States and the opportunity for a new life.

Because Nura is still wanted for crimes against the state in Bosnia, she knows she can never return and instead becomes Hana Babic, a quiet Minnesota librarian. When Claypool informs Hana that the man who may have murdered Amina goes by the name Iblis (or “devil” in their language), it hits Hana hard as she remembers killing Iblis during the war. Now, saddled with Dylan and knowing that there is a killer with vengeance on his mind who most certainly is looking for her, Hana must gear up for a return to her old self and attempt to stop this individual before he can get a jump on her.

Allen Eskens is such a gifted writer, and all of his books succeed at doing their part in explaining the human condition through authentic characters whose feelings ring true. THE QUIET LIBRARIAN is no exception and uses the horrors of war as a backdrop for readers to submit to a deeply layered tale of grief and pain. Most of his novels utilize his home state of Minnesota as a setting, and switching off between there and Bosnia lends additional credibility to a story that you will not soon forget.