THE SANDCASTLE GIRLS

Narrators Cassandra Campbell and Alison Fraser travel through time with alacrity in their narration of Bohjalian’s novel, based on his own family’s saga. In horrific detail the story unveils the Armenian genocide of 1915 as discovered by a contemporary writer who accidentally exhumes her grandparents’ past. The narrators balance the frivolities of Laura Petrosian’s childhood in her grandparents’ exotically detailed American home with revelations from the journals and letters she uncovers. These documents detail the earlier lives of her grandparents, American Elizabeth Endicott, who comes to Turkey to aid Armenian orphans, and Armen, an Armenian, who enters military service after his beloved wife and daughter become victims of the slaughter. As the couple comes together in an unlikely romance, they’re struck by an awful twist of fate. Campbell and Fraser convey the toll of war on the vast cast—from orphans to diplomats, physicians to soldiers. D.P.D. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2012]