The Sandcastle Girls: A Novel

I was so excited to win this book through LT. I would like to say it was an enjoyable read... but this work of historical fiction - surrounding the horror of The Armenian Genocide was hard to read... but necessary for me to finish. How is it that so little is taught with regards to this holocaust?

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As usual Chris Bohjalian has written an eloquent book delving into a emotionally driven subject. His characters; Elizabeth, Hatoun, Nevart - Armen- and in the end Karine are very "real". They will stay with me for a very long time.

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This was the first book I received as an early reviewer. I've read and enjoyed several other Chris Bohjalian novels, so I was excited to be chosen to review this new book. The story takes places in two time periods, modern-day and during the 1915 Armenian genocide, which I knew nothing about before

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reading this novel. The historical information was presented through the eyes of the main characters and this made it easy to follow along and grasp exactly how horrifying this little known deliberate slaughter of a race was to the people who experienced it first hand. I didn't mind the time shifting from the past to present day; however, I wish at times that there was more detail in the present day sections. I felt like they were an after thought and perhaps not even necessary to the story. Like several other of Bohjalian's novels, I felt he spent a lot of time setting us up for an ending that was less than shocking and in my opinion, rather rushed. Overall, I enjoyed the book and will continue to be a Chris Bohjalian fan!

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This book alternates between the present day life of writer Laura and her grandmother Elizabeth Endicott. Laura is trying to uncover information about her grandparents’ life, specifically their involvement with the Armenian genocide. Elizabeth has just arrived in the city of Aleppo (Syria) where

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she has traveled to help the refugees of the Armenian genocide. Elizabeth becomes interested in Armen, an Armenian refugee who is looking for information on his "deceased" wife and infant daughter.

I found this book to be fascinating. I knew of the Armenian genocide before reading this book, but I had no idea of the widespread scale and atrocities committed against the Armenian people. I wish the book had skipped the present-day. Laura's story was a bit boring in comparison to Elizabeth's adventures. I also thought the book shifted perspective at odd and random times. However, I enjoyed the characters, the story line and learning something new.

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Read this for my local library fiction book group and I love books that share history. Although this is a work of fiction, it is based on a little known history of the Armenian genocide that took place in Aleppo Syria in 1915. The novel covers this history and present day of a woman trying to

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decipher the story of her grandparents and her journey to find the truth.

I enjoyed the story and look to learn more about the history of the story. The author did not disappoint!

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Best book of the year so far. Loved the way Bohjalian wove a love story into the fabric of the historically relevant but largely unknown Armenian genocide.

My early reviewer book for July.
What a wonderful story. I started it and barely put it down, certainly didn't want to. I loved the story, the writers style,every thing about this book.
I am not going to go into what it was about except to say that it was a loosely historical story wrapped around

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the genocide of Armenians by the Turks back in the early 1900's. Others can go into
More detail all I want to say is that it was a wonderful story and I would recommend it to all my reading friends. It is sad- I cried a lot so be prepared. This is the second novel by this author that I have read- now I want to read all his books!
This is my third early reviewer book- all of them have been ever so enjoyable and I am so greatfull to have been allowed to preview them. I thank you all so qmuch.

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A captivating historical saga of loss and love steeped in Bohjalian's Armenian heritage. It is set in Syria during the First World War, during and after the Armenian genocide, and also in present day New York. The story guides you into the horror of the time and the how the family’s history

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trickles down into the next two generations.

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Bohjalian's own family history inspired this novel about the Armenian genocide during WWI. It is the story of a young American woman who goes to Syria to record the horrors that are happening to the Armenians, and who falls in love with an Armenian man. Of course this is an over-simplified

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synopsis. The book is far deeper and more complex than that.

It is also one of the most powerful books I've read in a long time.

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when I think of this book, all that comes to me is Karine. My heart aches for her suffering and yes there were millions but, they are all of them in the end... Karine.
This is a heartbreaking story of a genocide I was not familiar with and for that reason alone a miracle and blessing Chris has

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written about it. This is a story no one should ever forget about, and on that note...
This is a story about a young woman in 1915, Elizabeth Endicott who is traveling with her father to Aleppo to assist with the Armenian league of America with the thousands of refugees flooding into Syria from Turkey where a mass genocide is occurring.
there are many intertwining stories in this book but the main one is about the love between Elizabeth, Armen and Karine
It is in Aleppo that Elizabeth meets Armen, an Armenian engineer who has lost his wife and young daughter in the carnage. They begin tentatively to correspond when Armen goes to Egypt to join the British army and they slowly through their letters fall in love.
This story will grab you by the short hairs and not let you go until you are either in tears or at the end of the book.

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Although basically a love story, this book is richly seeped in historical fact exposing the atrocities that the Armenians had to endure at the hands of the Turks. While there are hundreds of books about the Jewish Holocaust, this is the first book I've read about the Armenian genocide of 1915. At

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times this book is extremely violent and brutal, it is also a poignant, compelling story about a period in time that is not widely known.

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A modern day woman learns of the love story and horror kept quiet in the history of her grandparents. We discover along with her of how her grandmother Elizabeth Endicott traveled to Aleppo, Syria with her own father to offer relief to Armenian refugees. What they find when they arrive is a

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genocide in progress as Turks and Syrians attempt to erase the Armenian race from the earth. While in Aleppo, Elizabeth meets Armenian engineer Armen and falls in love. The novel follows their stories as their modern day granddaughter unravels their past decades later.

I am ashamed to admit that I was unaware of the Armenian genocide, which resulted in the deaths of between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians between the years of 1915 and 1923. It's heartbreaking to think of what happened to these people, the suffering of those who died, and the haunting memories carried by those who survived.

I thought the format of this book was an interesting concept. Instead of simply telling the story of Elizabeth and Armen, to have it told through their granddaughter as she discovers what happened to them in their youth. Elizabeth and Armen were very believable. The granddaughter was sort of forgettable-- a bit of a quiet voice narrating and guiding the story, but Elizabeth and Armen were meant to be the stars of the story, and I found them to be real and solid and moving. They brought the horrors of the Armenian genocide to life.

Caught up in Elizabeth and Armen's story are the stories of many other characters, including an Armenian refugee by the name of Nevart and her young charge Hatoun. Two survivors of the genocide (at least they survived during the period that Elizabeth knew them), their own story is beautiful and stirring and heart wrenching. And then there is the underlying story of the images of the refugees, captured on film plates and being smuggled to safety to assure that they survive the slaughter, to reveal to the world the truth of what is going in Aleppo. And let us not forget the tragic story of Armen's wife Karine and infant daughter.

My final word: This story was a mixture of sweetness, tragedy and horror. Elizabeth and Armen were characters that I could really care about. This novel wraps a history lesson up in an intriguing story. A robust novel full of flavors, and I will undoubtedly be tasting of author Chris Bohjalian's other works. Definitely recommended!

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It took me quite a while to get into this book, and I found the frequent shift from Turkey in 1915 to Westchester, New York in 2009 somewhat distracting and occasionally difficult to follow. There are also a number of fairly unbelievable coincidences. BUT...this is a magnificent story about an

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event that I had never heard of: The Armenian Genocide. Like the round-up of the Jews at the Velodrome d'Hiver in Sarah's Key (by Tatiana de Rosnay), the systematic slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by the Turks during World War I was never mentioned in any of my history lessons. Bohjalian's main characters witness and/or are the victims of unspeakable acts of cruelty and depravity. They are also testimony to what is noble in humankind. The love story worked for me too. And the secondary characters all added interest or poignancy to the primary tale. A very worthwhile read!

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This was an Early Reviewers book for me and I was very disappointed. I like this author and have read many of his books and enjoyed them.
I was not familiar with the Armenian genocide which is central to the plot of this book. I believe that the author was on a mission to make his readers aware of

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the struggle of the Armenian population and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I guess I found the story of the twins pretty uninteresting and the moving back and forth in time (which often is such a great gimmick) just didn't work for me. Sometimes when the message overrides the story, it feels false. That was the case for me with this novel.
I do think Mr. Bohjalian's writing is lovely.

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I am so thankful that I won this through a Library Thing giveaway.

I had no idea about the genocide of the Armenian people. Not only does this fictional story weave in so many important facts but it makes it more personal with the characters in this story. I couldn't stop reading it. I received the

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book yesterday and did not put it down till I finished it this morning.

This book starts with the main character Elizabeth's granddaughter. She tells the story of how her grandmother from Boston traveled overseas with her father to help the Armenian refugees. There she is faced with the death and torture these people have been under by the Turkish government. She meets a Armenian man by the name Armen. Armen is looking for any information about his wife and child. He wants revenge but he can't get the red haired American out of his mind.

This book has so many revelations and twists that you just have to read on to find out what happens. I have laughed and cried while reading this book. I think this is going to be one of my favorite books for years to come.

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The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian is a starter book on the Armenian Slaughter. I first learned about it from a manager at work who is Armenian American. He told our group briefly about the genocide. After work, I went right to the Internet and looked up as much as I could about it. I read

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about the arrest and deportation of the intellectuals and leaders and the death marches through the desert. Having read that, I was really looking forward to this book.

There are two things that bothered me. The book shifted back and forth in time from the time after one of the death marches through the desert to modern times. The other thing is that I wanted more historical detail in the book. There are loads of black and white pictures on the Internet but none in this book. There was more fiction than I wanted. I didn't really want a love story. So, I think that maybe what I really wanted in this situation is not a historical fiction book but a history book. So some of my objections are just personal preferences instead valid objections. I would have liked to start the fictional story of Nevart and Hatoun while they were on the death march.

The characters that I loved in this book were Nevart and Hatoun. Nevart was a childless widow who had survived a terrible death march through the desert. The women's skin had been blacked and blistered by the sun; their clothes had been taken from them. Hatoun is the little girl that she unofficially adopted. I also liked the background information about the tragedy. The love story is well done but I didn't like coming back to modern times. I wanted to stay in that time period.

The book is very readable. I did have to stop reading once in a while when reading because of the telling of about an atrocity.

I would recommend this book to historical fiction readers and those who know nothing of this tragedy.

I received this book from the Amazon Vine program and that in no way influenced my review.

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I love history, and that is one of the reasons that I have been a lifelong reader of historical romance. I know that some readers state that they want a romance, not a history lesson, but I think the two go hand-in-hand. The setting of the book, the era, culture, social mores, religious beliefs,

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fashion, art and literature of the times all affect the way the characters would develop as people. Therefore, they are very important elements of the story line details. I appreciate the amount of research and love of subject an author invests into a well-written historical romance. However, sometimes historical fiction which is touched with romance goes far beyond a personal love story. It brings into focus profound true events which reveal the ugliest, most vile aspects of human nature. Such a book is author Chris Bohjalian's "Sandcastle Girls", a devastating, ultimately rewarding tale told with great skill by a distinctive storytelling voice. Depicting the massive horror of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, the story focuses on Elizabeth Endicott, a young Bostonian volunteer who travels to Syria seeking to provide aid to refugees who survived the slaughter. She meets Armen, a young Armenian man who lost his family in the genocide. Not expecting to fall in love, their surprising relationship eventually leads to marriage and a family of their own. Decades later, their granddaughter, Laura Petrosian is a novelist determined to uncover family secrets and to discover her true familial roots. "The Sandcastle Girls" will leave no reader untouched. The author tears us apart and then patches us back together with the power of his prose. He illuminates the reality of his own heritage with unforgettable characters and a soul-searing, shattering story line that will be impossible to remove from your thoughts.

Review Copy Gratis Amazon Vine

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The Sandcastle Girls is by far the most intense book I have ever read. Elizabeth Endicott and her dad go on a philanthropic mission to help the Armenian refugees who have survived annihilation by the Turks. Their plight is not over and for most of them survival won't even be possible. Elizabeth

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meets and falls in love with one of the survivors, Armen a young Armenian engineer. He is searching for anyone that would be able to give him information on the last hours of his wife and child. He has lost everything.

Bohaljian has written a love story that portrays the Armenian genocide explicitly. Often extremely graphic yet compelling the story of Elizabeth and Armen is one that had to be written. As the centennial of the massacre approaches, Bohaljian has written a book that will begin the conversation that is long overdue. History cannot forget the million and half people who perished at the hands of the Turks and neither will you.

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I've long been a fan of Bohjalian's writing. His research is always thorough and used to profound literary effect. "The Sandcastle Girls" is a one of his finest, if not THE finest, display of that talent. It is perhaps, at least in part, because he has an Armenian heritage, and he's been thinking

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about this book for a very, very long time. This story is based on the 1915 genocide of the Armenian people in Syria--1.5 million dead. He does not sugar coat the graphic violence done to the living and the dead, nor does he flinch in describing how the few (the too few) survived. His story, the 1915 era part of it, is told through the eyes of Western aide workers as well as an Armenian engineer who lost his family, a woman who barely survived a forced and brutal march through the desert, and a small girl who witnessed the rape and beheading of both her mother and her sister. The later part of the story, set in more modern times, is told by the granddaughter of two of the earlier characters. This layered tale is a love story, a war story, a family story, a survivors story, and much, much more. It is moving, heartbreaking, and yet hopeful all at the same time. It will open eyes to a piece of history that is rarely talked about, and hopefully stir thoughts of similar atrocities still be committed around the world, perhaps leading to swifter action to end them.

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I didn’t learn of the Armenian Genocide until I was the ripe old age of 19 or 20. I went to college in Waltham, Massachusetts, and one day on a drive through the neighboring town of Watertown, I spotted the Armenian Library and Museum. Realizing I had no idea where Armenians were from, I went

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home and looked them up.

Bohjalian, the grandson of Armenian survivors, has dropped us into the midst of the genocide, and has given us multiple points of view. First there is Elizabeth, the young Boston girl who is there to do mission work. Her counterpoint is Armen, a young Armenian engineer who is searching for his wife and daughter and surviving solely because of his usefulness. He searches every group of refugees that arrives in Aleppo, Syria after a ruthless march through the desert, but so far, the search is fruitless. These, and the additional points of view, give us the experience from many sides, and I think it’s a crucial part of the story construction.

In the present day, Laura is becoming increasingly obsessed with finding out the story of her grandparents, Armen and Elizabeth, a task made more difficult by their reluctance to talk about their experience. When she began her search, she had no idea the incredible story she would uncover.

I thought Bohjalian told a lovely story, full of joy and sorrow and missed opportunities. We get a taste of the Armenian culture, as well as an idea of the conditions of the genocide, without it being either too whitewashed or too overwrought. When a taste of the true horror is needed, he gives it to you, and when you need a taste of kindness, you get that too.

I’ve recently read another book that was very personal to the author: The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman, set in the time and place where she grew up. In that case, I felt that her closeness to the story was a huge set-back. The Sandcastle Girls is the complete opposite of that. This feels like a labor of love, and I think Bohjalian really did justice to the Armenian people and their troubled history.

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I run hot and cold on Chris Bohjalian - some of his books I love (Midwives, Skeletons at the Feast) and some just don't work for me (Night Strangers, Secrets of Eden). But I'm glad I picked up The Sandcastle Girls; it's by far my favorite of his books. I read a blurb where he said this is the book

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his fans have been asking him to write - one that addresses the atrocities suffered by the Armenians at the hands of the Turks in 1915. I can only imagine the pressure he felt to do justice to history as a temporary spokesperson (through his writing) for the Armenian people.

This is how I like my history: wrapped in a story that provides context and meaning to the factual and often dry accounts of the past. Bohjalian does an amazing job of describing what an outsider would have witnessed if dropped into the middle of the genocide. And the relationships he creates between the insiders and observers provides the emotional core.

On top of all that, it's a well written and interesting story spanning multiple generations of an Armenian, then Armenian-American family. It covers everything from the role of women and well-to-do families in society in the early 1900's to the nature of assimilation of immigrants to the role of history within families over time.

I felt like I came away from The Sandcastle Girls having enjoyed a great story and with a better understanding of a dark time in our not-too-distant past.

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The Sandcastle Girls reminds me, in some ways, of Bohjalian's book Skeletons at the Feast - however in The Sandcastle Girls things get a bit more personal - and it's noticeable.

Bohjalian uses some of his own family history to help in influencing the movement of the story and dives into a tale of

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the Armenian genocide that occured in 1916-1917 - when the US was still neutral and Germany and Turkey were allied. The Sandcastle Girls portrays so well the struggles the German allies were faced with (little knowing what what come in the future) as they witnessed the untold atrocities being visited not only the Armenian men - but the women and children as well.

Bohjalian pulls no punches in this novel. But instead of using gratuitous violence (aside from a few well-placed moments) he lays out each and every word of what the Armenian people lived with - and those words lay there, stark and unforgiving on the paper in such a way that I couldn't help but start crying.

The reason those words were so powerful, however, is because now I had names, albeit fictional ones, and fictional characters to connect them to. Not only that, I knew these people were representative, in a small way, of real people and real issues that, frankly, I had never been aware of. Why are we not told about this? Why isn't this common knowledge? In all my readings of WWI, I never once came across the information on this genocide.

In addition to the historical aspect of this novel, however, is a love story fraught with grief, hope, despair, and lies. An odd combination perhaps, but that is what I've come to expect from Bohjalian's books.

I very much recommend this book as well to fans of Alice Hoffman's The Dovekeepers - but even if you didn't like that book, or never read it, please pick this one up and give it a shot. I think you will find yourself to be caught up in the story just as much as I was.

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An amazing novel about the Armenian Genocide in Turkey during WWI. And we continue to ask ourselves, "How can these things keep happening?" It must have been a very difficult novel for Bohjalian to write. It's certainly a very important novel for all of us to read.

The overall story was okay, but thought so much more could have been done with the ending. I liked the way the story alternated between present-day and the past and did like much of how it ended and all came together, but felt it was rushed. The framework of the story in the past was what I found

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most interesting. I was not previously aware of the genocide of the Armenian people and was glad the author put so much historical information from that time period into the story.

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Wow, this book was heavier than I had anticipated with a title like Sandcastle Girls!! This was an ok book. I dont think I would recommend it. I had a hard time with it being written in the first person by a female and the author was male. IT was also written as if it were a true story, but it

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wasnt. It was kind of confusing to me because of that. But the story itself was ok, if a little slow. I didnt connect emotionally with the book and where I find the subject matter extremely sad and terrible, something was just missing in the story and it didnt really evoke any emotional reaction from me.

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