Home Is Beyond the Mountains

Kirkus Reviews

In 1918, when the Turkish army invades Persia, nine-year-old Samira and her Assyrian family must flee to the south, seeking protection from the British. Along the way, Samira's mother and sister die, her father disappears and is feared dead and only Samira and her brother Benyamin reach the Baqubah Refugee Camp. With so much loss in so many people's lives, family and home at the camp take on new meanings. Samira meets Anna, and together they come to care for a little boy named Elias; in a future caravan journey, their makeshift family expands to become the Rooftop Family (for the cultural practice of sleeping on rooftops in fine weather). Based on Lottridge's family stories, this is a moving tale of family, home, hope and survival. Though the third-person point of view is distancing, lending an oddly unemotional tone to the early portion of the tale, Samira is a girl readers will long remember, and this volume is a good match with other stories of children caught up in war, such as Suzanne Fisher Staples's Under the Persimmon Tree (2005). (author's note) (Historical fiction. 9-14)

Children's Literature - Judy DaPolito

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

VOYA - Peggy Fleming

Usually the author of historical fiction is knowledgeable about the history of the period and creates a story to make the time period come alive to the reader. In this case, the author also bases the story on facts gleaned from her mother's own experiences growing up in Persia (now Iran), and by using letters from her aunt who actually worked in orphanages in Iraq at the end of the first World War. The story revolves around the thousands of Assyrians in Persia being driven hundreds of miles south to safety near the British troops. The focus is on one family's hardships as they make the long trek, losing the mother, father, and youngest child during the first few days. The reader can't help but be impressed by the hope and determination that carries them through rough mountains while enduring hunger and exhaustion. Once in the safety of Iraq, about three hundred of the orphans spend three years waiting to return home. The author weaves into the story information about the culture, the food, and the customs of the Assyrians. Their three-hundred-mile walk back home is admirable and will be indelibly marked in the memory of a teenager's imagination. A map describing the route they took and a "history behind the story" chapter help to place the location and timeframe. The title of the book has a metaphorical and factual meaning. Home is indeed beyond the rugged mountains and possibly out of reach. But an undaunted and brave preteen Samira, her brother, and her extended family do finally reach home. Reviewer: Peggy Fleming

School Library Journal

Gr 6–10—When nine-year-old Samira and her family leave their Persian village, fleeing war in 1918, it is the beginning of a five-year odyssey in which she crosses national borders, loses both parents, and creates new family connections before her return, thanks to a determined orphanage director, Susan Shedd. This moving and suspenseful survival story is based on historical events; the director of the Hamadan orphanage in the country now called Iran was the author's aunt. Lottridge focuses her third-person narrative on Samira, imagining details of her prewar daily life, the horrors of the Assyrians' flight, the worlds of refugee camps and orphanages, and the long journey home, and bringing them to life for readers 90 years removed. Escaping Turks and Kurds, Samira and her brother had walked to Hamadan; returning, they were joined by more than 300 other refugee children, traveling the 300 miles on foot in "families" of 12 children organized and led by the redoubtable Miss Shedd. Out of sad, nearly forgotten history comes this triumphant story.—Kathleen Isaacs, Children's Literature Specialist, Pasadena, MD