the hundred year walk an armenian odyssey

Her stories of her own travels in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, told in chapters alternating with her grandfather's story, are moving at times, especially when she discovers places and people that were key in her ancestor's grim story. As the text moves along, readers will find themselves drawn into the whirlpool of events, soon forgetting the author's presence.

MacKeen was fortunate to discover the original accounts (and notes) her grandfather had made she intercuts her rewriting of those events with her own journey to the region. At many moments in this swift narrative, readers will be certain he will die-from the elements, starvation, thirst, exposure, or execution. Powerful, terrible stories about what people are willing to do to other people-but leavened with hope and, ultimately, forgiveness.-Kirkus Reviews, A freelance journalist debuts with an account of her long effort to retrace the journey of her grandfather, who improbably survived the vast massacre of Armenians during World War I.Stepan Miskjian's survival-a story of astonishing determination, luck, and horror-is beyond improbable. She's disappointed, for example, that President Barack Obama did not use the word 'genocide' in a public statement about the deaths of Armenians-which numbered perhaps 1.2 million. MacKeen occasionally inserts information from the many books she read on the subject-the words of American diplomat Henry Morgenthau appear a few times-and is not hesitant to criticize. At times, she leaves us hanging at the end of a chapter, but this is generally ineffective: we know she survived. She is also frightened much of the time-shadowed by police (she coopts one pair by buying them sodas)-uncertain of the language and of the wisdom of revealing her true purpose and ancestry. Their shared story is a testament to family, to home, and to the power of the human spirit to transcend the barriers of religion, ethnicity, and even time itself.Ī freelance journalist debuts with an account of her long effort to retrace the journey of her grandfather, who improbably survived the vast massacre of Armenians during World War I.Stepan Miskjian's survival-a story of astonishing determination, luck, and horror-is beyond improbable. With his journals guiding her, she grows ever closer to the man she barely knew as a child. Inspired to retrace his steps, she sets out alone to Turkey and Syria, shadowing her resourceful, resilient grandfather across a landscape still rife with tension.

Reading this rare firsthand account, his granddaughter Dawn MacKeen finds herself first drawn into the colorful bazaars before the war and then into the horrors Stepan later endured.

The Hundred-Year Walk alternates between Stepan's saga and another journey that takes place a century later, after his family discovers his long-lost journals. In his desperate bid for survival, Stepan dons disguises, outmaneuvers gendarmes, and, when he least expects it, encounters the miraculous kindness of strangers. Just before killing squads slaughter his caravan during a forced desert march, Stepan manages to escape, making a perilous six-day trek to the Euphrates River carrying nothing more than two cups of water and one gold coin. Gradually realizing the unthinkable-that they are all being driven to their deaths-he fights, through starvation and thirst, not to lose hope. He is separated from his family as they are swept up in the government's mass deportation of Armenians into internment camps. An epic tale of one man's courage in the face of genocide and his granddaughter's quest to tell his story In the heart of the Ottoman Empire as World War I rages, Stepan Miskjian's world becomes undone.

The hundred year walk an armenian odyssey