Their skin has been seared black by the sun or stained by the soil in which they have slept or, in some cases, by great yawning scabs and wounds that are open and festering.” They are being herded through the town by Turkish soldiers before being marched east, supposedly to be placed in “camps,” a word the consul says is a misnomer: “I am told that slaughterhouse is more apt.”Īmong these desperate deportees, Elizabeth befriends a woman named Nevart and the young orphan she has saved. Elizabeth, a recent graduate of Mount Holyoke College, with a rudimentary knowledge of Armenian, plans “to chronicle what she sees for their organization, the Friends of Armenia.” Having taken a crash course in nursing, she also plans to volunteer at the hospital.īut within minutes of arriving and meeting the American consul, they come upon a “staggering column” of women who are all “completely naked, bare from their feet to the long drapes of matted black hair.

“Imagine an oversized paperback book with a black-and-yellow cover, The Armenian Genocide for Dummies.” This light-hearted tone is in stunning contrast to the next chapter, which flashes back to 1915 to the horrors taking place in Aleppo, Syria.īoston magnate Silas Endicott has brought his daughter Elizabeth with him to Aleppo on “a small philanthropic expedition.” Their mission is to deliver food and supplies to survivors. “To understand my grandparents, some basics would help,” she says. Laura has embarked on a search to find out more about her Boston Brahmin grandmother and her Armenian grandfather, who met during the slaughter about which she knew very little. ‘The Sandcastle Girls: A Novel’ by Chris Bohjalian.

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian