The Sandcastle Girls

Summary (from the publisher): Over the course of his career, New York Times bestselling novelist Chris Bohjalian has taken readers on a spectacular array of journeys. Midwives brought us to an isolated Vermont farmhouse on an icy winter’s night and a home birth gone tragically wrong. The Double Bind perfectly conjured the Roaring Twenties on Long Island—and a young social worker’s descent into madness. And Skeletons at the Feast chronicled the last six months of World War Two in Poland and Germany with nail-biting authenticity. As The Washington Post Book World has noted, Bohjalian writes “the sorts of books people stay awake all night to finish.”

In his fifteenth book, The Sandcastle Girls, he brings us on a very different kind of journey. This spellbinding tale travels between Aleppo, Syria, in 1915 and Bronxville, New York, in 2012—a sweeping historical love story steeped in the author’s Armenian heritage, making it his most personal novel to date.

When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Syria, she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke College, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. The First World War is spreading across Europe, and she has volunteered on behalf of the Boston-based Friends of Armenia to deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian genocide. There, Elizabeth becomes friendly with Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. When Armen leaves Aleppo to join the British Army in Egypt, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, and comes to realize that he has fallen in love with the wealthy, young American woman who is so different from the wife he lost.Flash forward to the present, where we meet Laura Petrosian, a novelist living in suburban New York. Although her grandparents’ ornate Pelham home was affectionately nicknamed the “Ottoman Annex,” Laura has never really given her Armenian heritage much thought. But when an old friend calls, claiming to have seen a newspaper photo of Laura’s grandmother promoting an exhibit at a Boston museum, Laura embarks on a journey back through her family’s history that reveals love, loss—and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.

Review: I won this novel as a giveaway on Goodreads.

The Sandcastle Girls tells the story of Elizabeth, who travels to Syria in 1915 as an act of philanthropy to try to ease the suffering of victims of the Armenian genocide. Instead, Elizabeth falls for an Armenian widower who believes his wife and daughter to have been victims of the mass genocide. Elizabeth also becomes friends with a widowed victim and an orphan in her time in Syria, before returning to America. The novel also features a frame story in the present day with the granddaughter of Elizabeth and Armen, who is an author researching and uncovering the secret history of her grandparents.  

I've only read one other book by Bohjalian (Midwives), but he again is confronting heartbreaking topics head on in this novel and writing mostly from a female perspective, which I find an interesting choice.  I think this book tells an important story of many who suffered during the Armenian Holocaust, the history of which is not widely known. I was horrified by the violence and inhumane treatment of innocent people, and even more horrified that I had never heard mention of this event in any history class I've ever had. Way to go for Bohjalian for using fiction as a way to shed light on very real and horrific events. 

My least favorite part of this book was the frame story set in present day that introduced each chapter of the book. I did enjoy the meta-writing aspect of the granddaughter researching and writing her grandparents' story, but I found it the least compelling and believable part of the book. That may have been because it was told in first person while Elizabeth's 1915 story was told in third person. While I appreciate the update on present day Syrian-Armenian relations in 2012, I don't think they are necessary or have near the impact that the atrocities and violence the historical persepective does. Also, I really did not care for the title of this book. It makes it sound like a casual beach read/chick lit, which it most certainly is not!

The Sandcastle Girls was certainly illuminating for me, and is a very emotional read. It caused me to do my own research on the historical background to this novel. A very worthwhile read.

Stars: 4