Harvest in the snow

It was the summer of 1993, at the height of the genocidal Serbian siege of the Bosnian city of Sarajevo. No longer able to bear the television images of tearful wounded children desperate for medical care, a young Chicago woman decided to take action. She flew to Sarajevo determined to do whatever she could to help the children.

Ellen Blackman's planned ten-day trip turned into an eight-month ordeal - and a triumph of will. Ellen shared the tragedies and occasional triumphs of a proud, brave people whose universe was crumbling around them while a seemingly indifferent world stood by. Harvest in the Snow tells of dodging bullets in Sniper Alley, smuggling relief supplies over hostile borders, and struggling just to live in the nightmare world of a nation at war with itself.

And miraculously, despite tremendous obstacles, she got the children out. Ellen was the catalyst for the much-publicized emergency medical evacuations of children that you saw on television. This is her dramatic story.