This book clearly illustrates the events of these horrific times. This book is a great read, recommended for those who like a good thriller. It is a true story about an Armenian boy who must leave his pampered childhood behind and fight for his life. Hundreds of Armenian leaders were murdered in Istanbul after being summoned and gathered. The now leaderless Armenian people were soon to follow. Across the Ottoman Empire (with the exception of Constantinople, presumably due to a large foreign presence), the same events transpired from village to village, from province to province. Armenians were asked to turn in hunting weapons for the war effort. The government would then claim these weapons were proof that Armenians were about to rebel. Men were then "drafted" to help in the wartime effort. These men were either immediately killed or were worked to death. With only women, children, and elderly left were systematically emptied. They brought only what they could carry. The Armenians again obediently followed instructions and were "escorted" by Turkish Gendarmes in death marches that led across Anatolia. The Armenians were raped, starved, dehydrated, murdered, and kidnapped along the way. The eventual destination for resettlement was just as telling in revealing the Turkish governments goal: the Syrian Desert, Der Zor. They were to either be killed upon arrival or to somehow survive until a way to escape. The

Photos of this time were disturbing.

 Adam Bagdasarian of Armenian descent of a man who was in this tragedy, Bagdasarian drew on the experiences of his great uncle, looking at the tragic happenings between 1915 and 1918 during what has become known as the Armenian holocaust. This genocide forms the back-story for Bagdasarian's story, and the author manages to "put a human face on the numbers, in much the same way that Anne Frank helps us penetrate behind the blind numbers, to live the events through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy," according to Marvin Hoffman in the Houston Chronicle.