Chris Bohjalian Returning with a Historical Love Story: The Sandcastle Girls
The Sandcastle Girls is historical story of love and loss rooted in Chris Bohjalian’s Armenian heritage. The book is due to release on July 17,2012.
It is both a love story in the aftermath of Armenian genocide and story of a woman searching into her family’s past…
The story starts in 1915, when Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Aleppo, Syria with a diploma from Mount Holyoke, crash course in nursing and a little basic grasp of Armenina language.
Fig: Cover Page
She is volunteering on behalf of Boston-based friends of Armenia, to deliver food and medical aid to refugees of Armenian genocide. There she becomes friend with an Armenian engineer, Armen, who has lost his wife and infant daughter. Initially, they are just friends.
But when Armen, leaves Aleppo and travel into Egypt to join the British army, starts writing letters to Elizabeth then he knows that he has fallen in love with her. He wonders how could he love the wealthy American young girl who is totally different from his late wife…
Now the novel fast forwards to present day New York where we meet Laura Petrosian, a young writer. Her grandparents’ Pelham home is affectionately nicknamed “The Ottoman Annex”, yet she has never given her Armenian heritage a second thought.
But, an old friend of her calls saying to have seen her grandmother’s photo, in a newspaper, promoting an exhibit in Boston Museum, Laura sets out on a journey back through her family’s history.
What awaits her there is a wrenching secret buried for generations…
Fig: Chris Bohjalian
Liked it
wow cool.sounds interesting.
Ya, I too found the story backdrop interesting and is awaiting its release.
Thank you for this.