Synopsis
Samira is only nine years old when the Turkish army invades northwestern Persia in 1918, driving her family from its tiny village. They flee into the mountains, but the journey is so difficult that only Samira and her older brother survive. Beginning with a refugee camp run by the British Army, the children are shunted from one temporary home to another, finally ending up in an orphanage where it seems that they will live out their childhood. Then the new orphanage director, Susan Shedd, decides that she will take the 300 refugee children back to their home villages — a journey of 300 miles — through the mountains, on foot. Samira embarks on the journey with wonder and fear. Even if they make it, will there be anyone in her old village to take her in?
Children's Literature
In July 1918 in the village of Ayna, Persia, nine-year-old Samira and her family live peacefully next door to her aunt and uncle. But the village is near the Turkish border, and fear of invading soldiers causes most of the villagers to leave for the safety of British protection in Hamadan, more than six hundred miles away. Samira's father and mother leave on foot with Samira, twelve-year-old Benyamin, and three-year-old Maryam. Samira's Aunt Sahra and her two daughters stay behind waiting for Uncle Avram to come home. For Samira's family, as for many others, the trip to Hamadan is disastrous. Only Samira and Benyamin survive the journey, and they are separated early on. Reunited in Hamadan in September, they travel by wagon to the Baqubah Refugee Camp near Baghdad where they live in the Orphan Section. Here Samira mends clothes and helps take care of younger children. She also meets Anna, a girl her own age, who becomes a good friend. In the spring, the girls have a chance to go to a makeshift school where they learn to read and Samira finds out that she likes writing stories. In 1921, 150 of the orphans move to a new camp in Baghdad and later to another in Kermanshah, the first step on their journey home. By 1922 they have been sent to a camp in Hamadan, where their new director Miss Sheed, prepares them and another group of orphans who have joined them for their journey home by organizing them into families of eight who are responsible for each other on their walk to Tabriz. Samira, with her friend Anna, ultimately reaches Ayna and is reunited with her aunt and one cousin. The book is fiction but it is based on the author's mother's experiences as a child in Persia. The strength of the child characters in their desperate circumstances is impressive, believable, and engaging. Following the text are a page describing the origin of the story and two pages telling the history of the time and place Reviewer: Judy DaPolito