Black Bird Roma

It is 1943, and Katarina is on the run. On the run from who? Everyone.

In Nazi Germany's eyes, gypsies are criminals, and Katarina is a Class A offender. A 19-year-old girl with no family or friends, Katarina fights for her life as she evades Nazi capture across war-torn Europe and keeps her gypsy identity a secret. Germans and most other Europeans alike would not give a second thought to turning in a Jew, a homosexual, or a gypsy to the Nazis, for fear of their own lives, which meant all of Europe was a minefield. To her, everyone else was the enemy. To everyone else, she was the enemy.

On several accounts, freedom is within arm's reach, but fate is not kind to her. From 1943 to 1945, the Holocaust drags Katarina and thousands of other gypsies from France to Belgium and from Poland to Germany, stripping them of their identities and herding them like lambs to slaughter. Katarina does what she must to survive, including working in an underground Nazi club and getting her hands dirty working with the Resistance. But all the while, a Nazi officer she once crossed paths with is hunting her down, and with each passing day, he closes in closer and closer for the kill. Along her journey of survival, Katarina finds love and loses love in the form of a child, a mother figure, and two lovers. She teeters on the edge of sanity and must choose what matters most to her. Life, love, or happiness? Are they all not the same thing?

Can Katarina keep her identity a secret, and will she survive the infamous gypsy massacre?