The Sandcastle Girls

Locations
Call Number: Fiction, Adult Book / Fiction / General / Bohjalian, Chris
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Bohjalian, Chris	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Bohjalian, Chris	4-week checkout	On Shelf

In his fifteenth book, the author brings us on a very different kind of journey. This 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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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

little known history submitted by unknown on August 6, 2012, 9:01pm This piece of historical fiction is based on the authors family escaping the 1915 holocaust of Turkey against the Armenians (Christian Turks). It is a brutal account of the horrible history that few of know about.

The Sandcastle Girls submitted by leighsprauer on September 19, 2016, 1:25pm This could have been a good book if the author had been a good writer. He writes a fictionalized account of a woman's quest to learn about her Armenian roots; the book moves back and forth between the main character's research and a little of her life, and the life of her grandparents, set mainly in Aleppo, Syria. I've read a fair amount about the Armenian Genocide, so I wasn't shocked by any of the details in this book (although they are, of course, shocking), and the book had some twists that kept it interesting. I wish, however, that it had been written by a better writer. Bohjalian is average, at best. For a similar setting and conflict (specifically, Turkey during WWI) I would recommend Birds without Wings by Louis de Bernieres, instead of this book.