From the bestselling author of Midwives, here is a sweeping historical love story that probes the depths of love, family, and secrets amid the Armenian Genocide during WWI.When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Aleppo, Syria, she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. It’s 1915, and Elizabeth has volunteered to help deliver … volunteered to help deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian Genocide during the First World War. There she meets Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. After leaving Aleppo and traveling into Egypt to join the British Army, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, realizing that he has fallen in love with the wealthy young American.
Years later, their American granddaughter, Laura, embarks on a journey back through her family’s history, uncovering a story of love, loss—and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.
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As I was reading this book, I was really disappointed because before I started it I was expecting to like it, but it wasn’t rising to the occasion. Then I got to the end and was totally bowled over!
Beautiful novel explaining the tragic deaths, still unrecognized, during the Armenian Genocide. True to history.
About a time period and location that I was unaware of… made me wonder what other history lessons I’m missing.
Riveting story.
This is a good book depicting a brutal genocide of a people. I liked characters. It flipped back forth between timelines a little too much for me, but it was an interesting way to tell the story.
The best of Bohjalian
Excellent if somewhat harrowing novel of the 1915 Armenia Genocide. Beautifully written with interesting characters. Well worth the read.
At times this is a difficult read. But it’s worth finishing. Bohjalian captures the violence, despair, and heartbreak of the Armenian genocide by focusing on the lives of a handful of Americans, Germans, Turks and Armenians. Their interwoven stories, taking place at different times, along with the author’s exceptional descriptions and details, …
The title is very misleading. This book involves fictional characters in Aleppo during the horrific Armenian genocide of 1915. The Muslim Turks are killing the Armenians to rid their country of Christians. Nearly an entire race is wiped out. The story is told from several perspectives, a rich American, part-Armenian woman, who falls in love with …
Fabulous historical fiction giving insight to actual events that have been denied by governments. A must read that is enlightening and deals with the Armenian Holocaust.
A powerful novel on a milestone in history that forever haunted the Armenian people, on how much is held back and how much is passed on to future generations. Chris Bohjalian is an outstanding storyteller who zooms in on the lives of each individual to portray the horrors of genocide. This is not a book one should or can indeed gloss over, but …
Upfront, I must admit this writer is one of my favorite authors. This story takes the reader from the present, to the past, in alternating sections of the book, and describes the Turkish slaughter of the Armenians in the early 20th century, using relationships between the characters in both time periods to tell the tale. Some of the historic …
Humanized a little knownhorrific moment in time and against a people that is still reverberating in the world today. So much more comprehension of the enormity of a human tragedy than a line or two in a history book can convey. Have not read his other books but this one interested me because I knew so little and after finishing it, it spurred me …
Unlike the Holocaust, which I have learned about in school as long as I can remember, I first learned of the Armenian genocide (and, for the record, I’m totally Team Pope on this one: the systematic murder of a million plus people on the basis of ethnicity is pretty much the textbook definition of genocide) in college. I knew a kid, a …