Explore Further
Recommendations
Subject Headings
Loading...
Random House, Inc.
Over the course of his career, New York Times bestselling novelist Chris Bohjalian has taken readers on a spectacular array of journeys. Midwives brought us to an isolated Vermont farmhouse on an icy winter’s night and a home birth gone tragically wrong. The Double Bind perfectly conjured the Roaring Twenties on Long Island—and a young social worker’s descent into madness. And Skeletons at the Feast chronicled the last six months of World War Two in Poland and Germany with nail-biting authenticity. As The Washington Post Book World has noted, Bohjalian writes “the sorts of books people stay awake all night to finish.”
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.
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Chris Bohjalian's The Light in the Ruins.
Baker & Taylor
A historical love story inspired by the author's Armenian heritage finds early 20th-century nurse Elizabeth Endicott arriving in Syria to help deliver food and medical aid to genocide refugees, a volunteer service during which she exchanges letters with an Armenian engineer and widower. By the best-selling author of Midwives. 100,000 first printing.
Over the course of his career, New York Times bestselling novelist Chris Bohjalian has taken readers on a spectacular array of journeys. Midwives brought us to an isolated Vermont farmhouse on an icy winter’s night and a home birth gone tragically wrong. The Double Bind perfectly conjured the Roaring Twenties on Long Island—and a young social worker’s descent into madness. And Skeletons at the Feast chronicled the last six months of World War Two in Poland and Germany with nail-biting authenticity. As The Washington Post Book World has noted, Bohjalian writes “the sorts of books people stay awake all night to finish.”
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.
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Chris Bohjalian's The Light in the Ruins.
Baker & Taylor
A historical love story inspired by the author's Armenian heritage finds early 20th-century nurse Elizabeth Endicott arriving in Syria to help deliver food and medical aid to genocide refugees, a volunteer service during which she exchanges letters with an Armenian engineer and widower. By the best-selling author of Midwives. 100,000 first printing.
- Details
- Full Record
- Additional Info
Searching for more content…
Publisher:
2012
ISBN:
9780385534802
Branch Call Number:
E-Book
Characteristics:
data file
1 online resource
Loading...
Comment
Add a CommentReread this for my bookclub. Loved this book even more the second time. Very enlightening, well written story.
I have started reading this ebook and the tragic events of 1915 its such a familiar subject matter to me that sometimes I put the book down and contemplate if I want to continue reading it. I get really emotional. However, I decided that I will read it and see what happens.
A spellbinding tale travels between Aleppo, Syria, in 1915, and Bronxville, New York, in 2012, - a sweeping historical love story , love, that survived through Armenian massacres of 1915-1923.
The novel focuses on Elizabeth’s relationship with Armen, an Armenian engineer she meets early on, while also highlighting the suffering of the Armenian people, particularly the women and children. It is all shown through the eyes of Laura, Elizabeth and Armen’s granddaughter, who wants to learn more about the past they never discussed with her. The author holds nothing back – the descriptions of the Armenians’ suffering are graphic and will stay with readers, but so will an awareness of this moment in history. Book club worthy.
who knew. I certainly didn't. It is amazing that there was an Armenian genocide prior to World War 1. Fantastic story of the tragedy presented as is without apology. As the granddaughter from the 21st century investigates, she discovers the history of her grandparents and their time in Armenia during 1915. The story is woven together from the viewpoint of various characters: a child, a widow, an American Armenian from Boston, a man who lost his family, soldiers who fought (German, Austrailian, New Zealanders and British), and the American consul who worked to smuggle photographs of the genocide to America. Chris Bohjalian is a brilliant story teller and a joy to read.
This was an amazing book. I was awed at the author's ability to tell the engaging tales of a wide cast of both fictional and real characters and also enlighten the reader about a complex time in world history. The Armenian genocide and persecution was such an horrific event. The author communicated the horror and used it as a backdrop for the stories of people whom the reader came to care about a lot.
Chris Bohjalian is at his best in this novel, which, in its description of the horror of war, weaves a tender novel of the discovery of family ties. The plot weaves carefully and clearly the ties of today's family with that of old family members.
"As in Jodi Picoult's The Storyteller, war and genocide form the backdrop of this thought-provoking novel from an author known for examining hot-button issues in small town settings. But The Sandcastle Girls is nevertheless a bit of a departure for Chris Bohjalian, combining as it does a present-day setting with a historical love story (inspired by Bohjalian's Armenian heritage) set in 1915 Syria, during the Armenian genocide. Focusing on Laura Petrosian as she learns more about her great-grandparents' history, this moving, complex, and haunting novel explores the consequences of the genocide many years later, and "will leave you reeling" (Booklist)." Fiction A to Z May 2014 newsletter http://www.libraryaware.com/996/NewsletterIssues/ViewIssue/96117fb3-f773-4ebe-a30e-0933ee1fb11f?postId=88caf547-9d7c-4692-932a-8cbe7ef5fe90
Chris Bohjalian is a fantastic writer & story teller. Based on his personal interest & research of the Armenian slaughter of the WWI era. In novel form it somewhat diminishes the events. Love story? Hmmmm
A powerful novel about the events that led to the coining of the new word "genocide": the slaughter of over a million Armenians in Turkey just before World War I.