Since then, there has been a long, ongoing list of such atrocities: the Nazi's extermination plan for the Jews, ethnic groups attacked in Rawanda, Sarajevo, South Africa, and the Sudan. We learn with reference to the Armenian genocide that perpetrators vanished and went unpunished even after it was proven that it was a premeditated decision by a central body - planned annihilation. Reading this, one questions whether we ever learn from history, or is each generation doomed to repeat the same chilling, often fatal mistakes of generations past.
MacKeen makes a seamless connection between the events of her grandfather's past and her own present in places which continue to be rife with turmoil and heartbreakiong human suffering, most particularly, Aleppo. Stepan's ingenuity, resilience, and desperate actions to ensure survival will never be forgotten by anyone who reads his granddaughter's book.īy threading her own journey into the pages of her grandfather's story, Ms. Retracing his steps and meticulously researching the history of the genocide, she reveals in this book not only the brutality and crimes against humanity suffered by the Armenian people, but also offers a testimony to family, faith, and legacy. MacKeen, Stepan's granddaughter, decided to visit Turkey and Syria, where the event took place.
After reading Stepan's journals about his horrific journey, Ms. "The Hundred Year Walk" details the odyssey of Stepan Miskjian after he is taken from his family and driven toward the annihilation later to be known as the Armenian genocide, which dates from April 14, 1915.
A HUNDRED YEAR WALK TV
Today's headline for CNN news compared the world crises of 1914 with what's being scrolled across our TV screens currently: nations revolting against the status quo, closed borders bloodshed and battle prevail. 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.I read Dawn MacKeen's book, "The Hundred Year Walk", as 2016 came to an end a year of both personal change and struggle mirrored by the world at large. 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
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