![]() ![]() It will have broad appeal for a wide range of readers." - Library Journal, STARRED review "Readers will find themselves drawn into the whirlpool of events, soon forgetting the author's presence. Further, this is a tale of tracing your family roots and learning about who you are. VERDICT This previously untold story of survival and personal fortitude is on par with Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken. He was a peddler, an entrepreneur, a soldier for the Ottoman Empire during World War I, and a highly valued servant of a powerful Sheikh. He was no longer solely the victim of a holocaust, but clever, hard-working, and even a prankster. The narrative alternates perspectives between MacKeen's quest and her grandfather's odyssey. The author set out to bring her family's past into the present by translating her grandfather Stepan Miskjian's exhaustive personal journals, researching archival documents, and traveling to Turkey and Syria to retrace his steps and meet the Muslim family that saved him and other Armenians from certain death. With a health-care reporter's deft touch, she manages to play down the utter pathos, but her dedication to baring gruesome facts is as unfailing as her loyalty to the mission thrust upon her." - Barron's "Investigative journalist MacKeen always knew her grandfather escaped the Armenian Genocide before building a new life in the United States, but much of her family's incredible origins were masked by time, cultural boundaries, and systematic government denial. A moving portrait of one family's relationship to the past that offers surprising hope for reconciliation." - Toronto Globe & Mail "MacKeen doesn't shirk from recounting the grisly details of genocide, describing brutal beatings, hunger to the point of cannibalism, and thirst to the point of urine-drinking. MacKeen's added perspective is what makes this book though. ”- Library Journal (starred review)Ī "Must read" from the New York Post "Gripping." - Outside "Harrowing." -Us Weekly "MacKeen weaves multiple historical sources for corroboration and context, but her main material, Stepan's unpublished memoir, lands the emotional punch of personal narrative. Her readers will be rapt-and a lot smarter by the end.”-Meghan Daum, author of The Problem with Everything “Harrowing.”- Us Weekly “This previously untold story of survival and personal fortitude is on par with Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken. MacKeen’s excavation of the past reveals both uncomfortable and uplifting lessons about our present.”-Ari Shapiro, NPR “I am in awe of what Dawn MacKeen has done here. “This book reminds us that the way we treat strangers can ripple out in ways we will never know. 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. Dawn uses his journals to guide her to the places he was imperiled and imprisoned and the desert he crossed with only half a bottle of water. In The Hundred-Year Walk, MacKeen alternates between Stepan’s courageous account, drawn from his long-lost journals, and her own story as she attempts to retrace his steps, setting out alone to Turkey and Syria, shadowing her resourceful, resilient grandfather across a landscape still rife with tension. Growing up, Dawn MacKeen heard from her mother how her grandfather Stepan miraculously escaped from the Turks during the Armenian genocide of 1915, when more than one million people-half the Armenian population-were killed. “An emotionally poignant work” of survival during the Armenian genocide (Aline Ohanesian, author of Orhan’s Inheritance ). A Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist and New York Post Must-Read.
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