Adam Bagdasarian’s debut novel was inspired by the experiences of his great uncle, who lived through the Armenian genocide in Turkey in 1915. Vahan Kenderian is 12 years old as the story opens. He describes his life, as the son of an influential Armenian family, as comfortable to the point of luxury. But early in 1915, everything changes. The Turkish government begins to arrest Armenians, Vahan’s father and uncles among them. When one of his uncles returns, haggard, gaunt, and beaten, he has small bags of poison for Vahan’s mother and sisters in “case there is any trouble.” “I did not know when I opened my eyes the next morning that it was the last day of my childhood,” says Vahan. That is the day the gendarmes execute two of Vahan’s older brothers before the family’s eyes. The rest are arrested and detained in a small room with dozens of other Armenians. Vahan manages to escape with his remaining brother when they are being marched to a new location. His brother soon dies, and Vahan is alone, surviving by wit, luck, and the occasional assistance of a sympathetic Turk. He relates his experiences in the voice of a child betrayed, confused, but determined to survive. Bagdasarian writes with haunting realism, describing brutality in painfully beautiful prose. A chilling epigraph underscores the importance of knowing and remembering this and all other holocausts: “Who does now remember the Armenians?”--Adolph Hitler, 1939. (Age 14 and older)

Based on the true story of an Armenian boy who survives the near-extermination of his race. It is 1915 and Vahan Kendarian, the pampered youngest son of one of the most influential Armenian families in Turkey, is confident that his privileged world will always include the house he loves, the laughter of his brothers and sisters, a sense of belonging. But when his uncle disappears and his father is taken away, when two brothers are shot before his eyes in the family garden, Vahan's world shatters. "Be steel," his father had always said when something tested his son's character. "Steel is made strong by fire." What is about to occur is Vahan's fire. In the next three weeks he will lose his home and know hunger and thirst for the first time. In the next three years he will become an orphan, a prisoner, a beggar, a servant, a stowaway in order to survive. He will meet and be befriended by the Horseshoer of Baskale, a Turkish governor famous for his practice of nailing horseshoes to the feet of his Armenian victims. He will live in a Turkish village, posing as a deaf mute and falling in love with the daughter of the only man in the village who guesses he is Armenian- and who is determined to kill him because of it. He will witness the murder and deportation of his neighbors and friends. And he will discover inside himself reserves of strength and courage he did not know existed. Based on the experiences of the author's great-uncle during the Armenian Holocaust, Forgotten Fire is the story of one boy's search for the survivor inside himself. It is the story of a lost nation-a powerful celebration of the resilience of the human spirit during the darkest of times.