ORHAN'S INHERITANCE by Aline Ohanesian

This book opens with the reading of Kemal’s will, and, as you might expect, there’s a mysterious recipient—Seda Melkonian.  Neither Kemal’s son Mustafa nor his grandson Orhan knows who Seda is, but she has inherited the family home.  Also, Orhan has inherited the family business, which, under Turkish law, rightfully belongs to his father.  Orhan travels to an Armenian nursing home in California to persuade Seda to sell the family home back to him.  We discover that Orhan is essentially oblivious to the Armenian genocide that took place in Turkey during WWI.  Seda’s story of survival and of her relationship with Kemal occupies the majority of the pages in the book.  There’s very little that’s surprising in the plot, and the genocide coverage is mostly limited to the experiences of Seda’s family.  Still, the story is moving and well told, and Orhan knows from his own experience what it’s like to be persecuted without cause.  Orhan may be the title character, but he’s not the primary character by a longshot.  That distinction belongs to Seda.  Her supporting characters are Kemal and Fatma, an elderly family member whose role in the family history becomes known late in the novel.  The story is tragic, but the author maintains a clear-eyed tone that educates the reader, as Seda educates Orhan, about events that are not widely known.   I have not read it, but Chris Bohjalian’s The Sandcastle Girls also addresses this forgotten piece of history.  Sometimes fiction has just as much, or more, power to enlighten us as nonfiction.