The Sandcastle Girls

Unlike the Holocaust, which I have learned about in school as long as I can remember, I first learned of the Armenian genocide (and, for the record, I'm totally Team Pope on this one: the systematic murder of a million plus people on the basis of ethnicity is pretty much the textbook definition of genocide) in college. I knew a kid, a friend-of-a-friend, who still carried a bit (or more) of rage about the events of 1915 and readily shared his people's story with all who would listen. (It's from him that I also learned that virtually every person whose last name ends -ian is Armenian, Chris Bohjalian, author of the The Sandcastle Girls included.)

All of which is to say that it's not for naught that Bohjalian refers to the Armenian genocide more than once as the "Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing About." With Sandcastle Girls, he has set out to inform his readers about the genocide, as much as draw them into his story. The story, briefly, is of an American missionary and her father who arrive in Aleppo, Syria, in 1915, to bring relief and aid to the Armenias. Yes, Elizabeth Endicott and her father are among only a tiny handful of Americans to be aware of the events in this corner of the Ottoman Empire, but things are far worse when they arrive than even they expected. (Isn't that always the case.)

Among a string of beaten, starving, sick and - yes, naked - deportees being marched through Aleppo, Elizabeth encounters Nevart and her little charge Hatoun, forming a bond with the woman and girl that is one of the central elements of the story. Also, she is head-over-heels in love with Armen Petrosian, an Armenian engineer whose wife and infant daughter are among the deported and dead. Into this story, which is fairly compelling, is woven the modern day story of their granddaughter, Laura, and her mission to reconstruct their history.

Overall, I felt Sandcastle Girls would have been better if it hadn't tried to do so much. Specifically, I would have rather had more of Elizabeth and Armen and less of Laura. Unlike in Elizabeth is Missing or Villa Triste, the parallel histories here felt forced and gimmicky. Focusing more on the historical story would also have allowed more character development of the minor characters. For example, the character who had the most, excuse me, character was Ryan Martin, the American consul in Aleppo, but the reader gets to see so little of him that he doesn't quite seem real.

Sandcastle Girls is a quick read, and certainly provides a new perspective on an aspect of World War I about which too little is known or written. For those reasons alone, it is worth reading, and all the more so if you can focus on the historic story and accept the Laura narrative at face value, as filler.

Three stars.