Grim history underpins love story
The Sandcastle Girls represents somewhat of a departure for author Chris Bohjalian, who usually writes about controversial or intriguing issues in his novels and often presents convincing arguments for both sides of a debate.
This time, he tackles historical fiction — albeit of a controversial event — from a personal perspective. He writes about the mass deportation of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, some of whom were his ancestors. Here’s what he wrote about deciding to write The
Sandcastle Girls in an essay for The Armenian Times:
“The novel has been gestating at the very least since 1992, when I first tried to make sense of the Armenian Genocide: a slaughter that most of the world knows next to nothing about.
Three of my four Armenian great- grandparents died in the poisonous miasma of the genocide and the First World War. Moreover, some of my best — and from a novelist’s perspective most interesting — childhood memories occurred while I was visiting my Armenian grandparents at their massive brick monolith of a home in a suburb of New York City.”
The use of term “genocide” in relation to the events that occurred in what was to become Turkey is politically charged. Some countries, including Canada, have recognized the Armenian deaths as a genocide, while other countries, including the U. S. and Turkey, have not. Bohjalian’s book is clearly on the side of those who believe the Armenians were being deliberately and systematically wiped out.
The book is narrated by a modernday fictional female author named Laura Petrosian, who is also descended from Armenian grandparents. She finds a disturbing photo of an Armenian woman who shares her last name, and is then motivated to dig into her grandparents’ history. The novel alternates between Laura Petrosian’s present day story, and that of her grandparents: the displaced Armenian engineer Armen Petrosian and the young American woman Elizabeth Endicott, who travels to Syria in 1915 with her physician father to deliver aid and food to the Armenians.
The ensuing story is, at its heart, a love story, but it is also a grim and at times harsh look at these controversial events. Elizabeth and Armen, whose wife and daughter have disappeared in the conflict, become friends. Armen joins the British army in Egypt, putting his life at risk in doing so. While he is away, Armen and Elizabeth write letters to each other, and begin to fall in love. Meanwhile, in the present- day timeline, Laura finds the letters and uses them as the basis for her research.
Bohjalian’s books are always entertaining, and this one continues in that tradition. Readers should be prepared for some description and passages that are difficult to read and that might make them uncomfortable, but at the same time there is much to learn here. The love story is touching and believable, adding a softer dimension to what is at times a brutal story.
Chris Bohjalian is the author of 15 books, including the New York Times bestseller Midwives and Skeletons at the Feast, which was also historical fiction.