By David Kherdian
5 Stars
Historical Fiction
Adult
This is
another book from my children's homeschooling library. There are
quite few good books that we purchased for the Sonlight curriculum. I
have found a lot of them not only educational but well written as
well.
The
young heroine of the story is Veron Dumehjian and it is written in
first person. The back book cover calls it a diary but in reality it
is written as a fictionalized autobiography. The real life Veron is
the author's mother. How much is real and how much is fiction is
impossible for me to distinguish.
The
goal of the book is to chronicle the Turkish genocide of the
Christian Armenian minority in that country. We see it all through
Veron's eyes. The story begins in Azizya, Turkey. In 1915 the family
is forced out of their home and marched east to exile or death.
Stragglers are shot and even those who survive suffer horribly. With
the help of family, friends and sympathetic or bribed strangers, she
survives to return to her childhood home to live with relatives
because he immediate family has all been lost. She maintains a
positive outlook as she moves from one tragedy to the next. After the
First World War the Greeks and Turks go to war and young Veron is
once again caught in the middle. She is finally evacuated from Smyrna
to Greece where she agrees to marry an American-Armenian through a
family arrangement. The book ends with the engagement celebration and
young Veron looking forward to a new life in America.
I have
four more books from this program that I would like to review. So far
they've all been educational and excellent. I will take a break from
them for awhile though. They all deal with man's inhumanity to man
and I find that it weighs me down. I will finish them just not right
now. I think the lessons that these books teach are very important.
The
books comes highly recommended in my view. The message is powerful.
You rejoice and mourn with our heroine as the story progresses.
No comments:
Post a Comment