Growing up, I would find her in the kitchen, locked in conversation with Mama and Baba.

Her readers will be rapt-and a lot smarter by the end.”-Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion¶ “Harrowing.”- Us Weeklyįor as long as I can remember, my mother has been talking to her dead parents. A New York Post Must-Read ¶ “This book reminds us that the way we treat strangers can ripple out in ways we will never know…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…Her sentences sing.¶ A Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize 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. The award-winning story of a young Armenian man’s harrowing escape from the massacre of his people and of his granddaughter’s quest to retrace his steps ¶ “Part family heirloom, part history lesson, The Hundred-Year Walk is an emotionally poignant work, powerfully imagined and expertly crafted.”-Aline Ohanesian, author of Orhan’s Inheritance ¶ 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. ICLE (International Center for Leadership in Education)Ĭustomer Service & Technical Support Portal Into Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, 8-12 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.Science & Engineering Leveled Readers, K-5 With his journals guiding her, she grows ever closer to the man she barely knew as a child. Inspired to retrace his steps, she sets out alone to Turkey and Syria, shadowing her resourceful, resilient grandfather across a landscape still rife with tension. Reading this rare firsthand account, his granddaughter Dawn MacKeen finds herself first drawn into the colorful bazaars before the war and then into the horrors Stepan later endured. The Hundred-Year Walk alternates between Stepan’s saga and another journey that takes place a century later, after his family discovers his long-lost journals. In his desperate bid for survival, Stepan dons disguises, outmaneuvers gendarmes, and, when he least expects it, encounters the miraculous kindness of strangers. Just before killing squads slaughter his caravan during a forced desert march, Stepan manages to escape, making a perilous six-day trek to the Euphrates River carrying nothing more than two cups of water and one gold coin. Gradually realizing the unthinkable that they are all being driven to their deaths he fights, through starvation and thirst, not to lose hope.

He is separated from his family as they are swept up in the government’s mass deportation of Armenians into internment camps. In the heart of the Ottoman Empire as World War I rages, Stepan Miskjian’s world becomes undone. Listen Here.Ģ017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist

A hundred year walk