The Road from Home: The Story of an Armenian Girl

This was a true page turner of a book recounting atrocities not spoken very often. I highly recommend it for anyone.

The Road From Home is a wonderfully told account of a young Armenian girl, Veron, who was forced out of her home in Turkey. She and her family were sent into the desert by the Turkish government to die. The Armenian Genocide is an event in history that not many people know about. Reading this book will give a better understanding of this unspeakably horrible act in history. As an Armenian myself, I would like to recommend this book to everyone so they may be able to understand what the Armenian race in Turkey went through in the year 1915, and how the survivors dealt with losing their families.

This is one of the best first-hand accounts about the Genocide that I've read. FINALLY, a book was written about it for younger people. Once I start teaching, this will definitely be on my list of required reading.Kherdian started off a bit slow--I wasn't sure I'd get through it. But once I hit page 20, I couldn't put it down! It was captivating, touching. I just wanted Veron to be okay--to be able to understand what was going on. For her to survive. Only two books have ever managed to bring tears to my eyes, and this was one of them.Even though I'm not Armenian, I've read countless books about both Armenia and the Genocide. This definitely is one of the best. It's easy to understand (though the fact that it happened is still so difficult for me to comprehend).If you're an Armenian parent (or grandparent!) struggling to tell your teen about it, this book will help greatly. I highly recommend it. Kherdian should be given high praises for having the courage to pen this book.

THE ROAD FROM HOME, A True Story of Courage, Survival and Hope by David Kherdian, Beech Tree Books Reviewed by Y. Stephen Bulbulian Although considered juvenile literature, poet David Kherdian's award-winning story of his mother's young life is a story of silent determination, hope and ultimately survival. This is far more than juvenile literature. Through unbelievable adversity and suffering, there is astounding good luck and grace in the face of misfortune. "The Road From Home" is also a sociological slice of life into the being and ways of the Armenians, historic inhabitants of Anatolia, now Turkish territory. Driven from their homes and massacred, this is a classic story of Armenian survival. The young girl, Veron Dumehjian, lived a placid life in the home of her well-to-do family. She loved her family home and the garden with "the poppies that grew beyond [the] garden wall." Her desire to return to the garden kept her hopes up during years of adversity. Kherdian describes the customs, traditions, holidays, rituals, the Armenian words, and even the food, that immortalizes the life of the peaceful people, annihilated by the Turkish genocide. This book is excellent sociology, written as no sociologist could. In her eighth year, Veron's life, the Armenian homes and countryside are darkened by the black cloud of Turkish repression. In the latter-days of the previous century, and in 1909, in Adana, Armenians suffered barbarities at the hands of the Turks, under the rule of Abdul Hamid..Young Veron began hearing words like "deportation, massacres and annihilation." Her uncles were conscripted into the Turkish army; World War One had broken out. Using the war as an excuse, the Turks began a protracted annihilation of the Armenians. Given three days to prepare, the Dumehjian family began their forced march from the family home into the Syrian desert. Veron slowly loses all of her immediate family, brother, sister, mother, father, grandfather during the course of the journey. She becomes an orphan, nearly starved and survives with the help of deposed women (aunties) from her village. Ending up in an orphanage in Aleppo, she becomes reacquainted with relatives. Miraculously, she returns to her beloved grandmother, still living in the family home in the old village, only to discover she could not return to the idealized home she dreamed of. All things had changed, all lives were irreparably damaged by the lose of loved ones and the destruction of the Armenians. Her own grandmother, with her family lost, becomes Veron's slave-master. Relocated in Smyrna, on the Mediterranean coast, Veron lives through yet another round of atrocities at the hands of the Turks. With uncommon luck, she and an aunt are rescued and sent to a refugee camp in Greece, where life begins again in the pursuit of normalcy. From there, she becomes a gracious and beautiful young women and a fiancee to a pre-arranged mar