JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - s4story -- What if the most powerful weapon in war is not the one that destroys buildings, but the one that determines what millions of people believe?

In 1993, author Lane Keller was considering what to write next when she watched CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour report from a mass grave in the former Yugoslavia.

"I wanted to understand how brother can turn against brother," Keller recalls.

That question became more than a decade of research and ultimately the foundation of her historical novel, A Covenant of Poppies.

Keller immersed herself in histories of Yugoslavia, military accounts, and contemporary reporting, eventually filling an entire bookcase with sources that often seemed to describe different wars. Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian accounts contradicted one another, with heroes in one version becoming villains in another.

Determined to hear directly from those who experienced the conflict, Keller spoke with Bosnian refugees, befriended Serbian families in New York, and volunteered to teach English within the Croatian community. Those relationships led to intimate conversations about family histories, inherited grievances, displacement, and war.

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She also placed advertisements in The New York Times inviting firsthand accounts. Letters arrived with books, handwritten testimony, religious icons, family mementos, and stories of lost relatives, destroyed villages, betrayal, and atrocities that remained painfully alive in family memory.

Those accounts led Keller toward a chapter of Balkan history she had only briefly encountered before, fundamentally changing her understanding of the conflict and shaping a central revelation in A Covenant of Poppies.

The novel follows Duke Johnson Vrakuvic, a young American journalist investigating the region's violent past. As political intrigue and conflicting accounts draw him deeper into history, he discovers his own family is entangled in the events he is attempting to unravel.

Set against the breakup of Yugoslavia and its aftermath, the novel explores how historical grievances, nationalism, political interests, and media narratives influence both war and how it is remembered.

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"I no longer believed fierce nationalism and ancient hatred were sufficient explanations for brother turning against brother," Keller writes.

About Lane Keller

Lane Keller is an author of fiction and nonfiction whose work challenges conventional narratives and examines the forces shaping human belief, behavior, and perceptions of reality.

Her published books include Unleashing the Rebel Within and The Consciousness Sourcebook. Her fiction includes Cayce Leighton Investigations, Will Read Breasts, and A Covenant of Poppies.

Literary Representation, Publishing & Media Inquiries
Lane Keller
lanekellerwriter@gmail.com
www.lanekellerauthor.com