The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey

By Dawn Anahid MacKee Featured on NPR's All Things Considered. Listen Here. 2017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist In the heart of the Ottoman Empire as World War I rages, Stepan Miskjian’s world becomes undone. He is separated from his family as they are swept up in the government’s mass deportation of Armenians into internment camps. Gradually realizing the unthinkable that they are all being driven to their deaths he fights, through starvation and thirst, not to lose hope. 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. In his desperate bid for survival, Stepan dons disguises, outmaneuvers gendarmes, and, when he least expects it, encounters the miraculous kindness of strangers. The Hundred-Year Walk alternates between Stepan’s saga and another journey that takes place a century later, after his family disco