Join Sarah in conversation with George Aghjayan at TidePool BookShop.

In The Kaleidoscope of Destiny, published by Koehler Books, fourteen-year-old Arakel dreams of traveling on the Silk Road with his two best friends–one Turkish and the other Armenian. However, the year is 1915. Arakel and his family are exiled from their home into the desert along with nearly every other Armenian during the genocide. To try and survive, he must reach out to people he considers enemies–Arab camel drivers, Bedouins, Germans, Turks, Kurds, even a wandering dervish–but how can he trust them? Ultimately, the novel reaffirms our collective humanity even in the darkest of times.

Before publishing her debut novel, The Kaleidoscope of Destiny, Sarah Ignatius worked for many years as a human rights lawyer and as a nonprofit executive director, most recently at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research in Belmont, MA. She also taught immigration and asylum law at Boston College Law School for several years and is the co-author of Immigration Law and the Family. She has received recognition from the New England Society of Children’s Books Writers & Illustrators and the National League of American Pen Women as well as Glimmer Train, and was selected as a Somerville Arts Council Literature Artist Fellow. She graduated from Stanford University and Georgetown University Law Center. She is half-Armenian and lives in Somerville, MA with her family.

George Aghjayan is Director of the archives of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). He is the host of “Hye Roots: Descendants of Ararat,” the first show devoted to Armenian genealogy. His primary area of focus is the demographics and geography of Western Armenia as well as a keen interest in the hidden Armenians living there today. He is the creator and curator of westernarmenia.weebly.com, a website dedicated to the preservation of Armenian culture in Western Armenia.