Homebound

Margaryta Winkler

A silent book with a single, powerful cry: Peace!

Like the storks returning each year to their old nests, Margaryta Wikler longs for a home where peace awaits. A debut work by a promising young talent which speaks to us all.

A flock takes flight, heading home. The first land a stork sees is Cape Kinburn, a sandbar on the Black Sea. Each spring, she returns to her nest to lay eggs and raise her young. But Ukraine, once her green haven, is scarred by war. Explosions and fires darken the skies. The stork rests where she can, even as floodwaters from the destroyed Kakhovka Dam swallow villages, even as mined fields and ruined cities stretch below. Her nest is gone, yet she keeps flying.

And like the stork, the Ukrainian people won’t give up.

“I love to capture fleeting, silent moments of beauty,” says Margaryta Winkler, a Ukrainian illustrator and graphic designer now studying at the Rhode Island School of Design on a Fulbright scholarship. Forced to flee her war-torn country after February 2022, she found herself far from home, yet morally bound to those still resisting. This book is her heartfelt tribute to her land, her people, and the hope of peace.