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In his fifteenth book, The Sandcastle Girls, he brings us on a very different kind of journey. This spellbinding tale travels between Aleppo, Syria, in 1915 and Bronxville, New York, in 2012—a sweeping historical love story steeped in the author’s Armenian heritage, making it his most personal novel to date.
When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Syria, she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke College, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. The First World War is spreading across Europe, and she has volunteered on behalf of the Boston-based Friends of Armenia to deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian genocide. There, Elizabeth becomes friendly with Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. When Armen leaves Aleppo to join the British Army in Egypt, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, and comes to realize that he has fallen in love with the wealthy, young American woman who is so different from the wife he lost.Flash forward to the present, where we meet Laura Petrosian, a novelist living in suburban New York. Although her grandparents’ ornate Pelham home was affectionately nicknamed the “Ottoman Annex,” Laura has never really given her Armenian heritage much thought. But when an old friend calls, claiming to have seen a newspaper photo of Laura’s grandmother promoting an exhibit at a Boston museum, Laura embarks on a journey back through her family’s history that reveals love, loss—and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 17, 2012 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780307917409
- File size: 321541 KB
- Duration: 11:09:52
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Narrators Cassandra Campbell and Alison Fraser travel through time with alacrity in their narration of Bohjalian's novel, based on his own family's saga. In horrific detail the story unveils the Armenian genocide of 1915 as discovered by a contemporary writer who accidentally exhumes her grandparents' past. The narrators balance the frivolities of Laura Petrosian's childhood in her grandparents' exotically detailed American home with revelations from the journals and letters she uncovers. These documents detail the earlier lives of her grandparents, American Elizabeth Endicott, who comes to Turkey to aid Armenian orphans, and Armen, an Armenian, who enters military service after his beloved wife and daughter become victims of the slaughter. As the couple comes together in an unlikely romance, they're struck by an awful twist of fate. Campbell and Fraser convey the toll of war on the vast cast--from orphans to diplomats, physicians to soldiers. D.P.D. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine -
May 28, 2012
Bohjalian’s powerful newest (after The Night Strangers) depicts the Armenian genocide and one contemporary novelist’s quest to uncover her heritage. In 1915, Bostonian Elizabeth Endicott arrives at a compound in Aleppo, Syria, to provide humanitarian aid to Armenian refugees. A fresh-faced nurse just out of college, Elizabeth has learned only rudimentary Armenian, but soon befriends Armen Petrosian, an engineer who lost his wife and daughter during the chaos of the deportations and mass murders. Though Armen departs for Egypt to fight with the British Army in WWI, their relationship blossoms into an epistolary romance. The atrocities of the genocide and the First World War continue, and Bohjalian spares no detail in his gritty descriptions. Nearly a century later, Laura Petrosian is living in the suburbs of New York City when a friend alerts her to a possible photo of her grandmother being used to advertise an exhibit about “the Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing About.” As she explores her past, Laura discovers that what she once considered to be her grandparents’ eccentricities—their living room was dubbed the “Ottoman Annex”—speak to a rich and tragic history. Though the action occasionally feels far-off, Bohjalian’s storytelling makes this a beautiful, frightening, and unforgettable read. Agent: Jane Gelfman, Gelfman Schneider.
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