Andrew Roe & Aline Ohanesian - The Miracle Girl & Orhan's Inheritance

The Miracle Girl is set in suburban Los Angeles, where eight-year old Anabelle lies in her bedroom.  Day in and day out, she lies there, eyes open, but otherwise immobile in a coma-like state, as a result of a car accident. She is cared for by her mother, since her father has left them, unable to deal with the guilt from having caused the accident. After a family friend experiences a miracle when visiting with Anabelle, word spreads and people start coming from all over, lining up down the block in the hot sun, camping out, vendors selling bottles of water, the media knocking on the door.

When Orhan’s brilliant and eccentric grandfather Kemal—a man who built a dynasty out of making kilim rugs—is found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan inherits the decades-old business. But Kemal’s will raises more questions than it answers. He has left the family estate to a stranger thousands of miles away, an aging woman in an Armenian retirement home in Los Angeles. Her existence and secrecy about her past only deepen the mystery of why Orhan’s grandfather willed his home in Turkey to an unknown woman rather than to his own son or grandson. Moving back and forth in time, between the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the 1990s, Orhan’s Inheritance is a story of passionate love, unspeakable horrors, incredible resilience, and the hidden stories that can haunt a family for generations.

Born and raised in the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier, California, Andrew Roe has had his fiction published in Tin House, One Story, the Sun, Glimmer Train, The Cincinnati Review, Slice, Pank, Avery Anthology, Gigantic, Freight Stories, Failbetter, the Good Men Project, and other literary magazines, as well as the anthologies Where Love Is Found and 24 Bar Blues. His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Salon.com, SF Weekly, San Francisco Bay Guardian, and elsewhere.

Aline Ohanesian's great-grandmother was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Her history was the kernel for the story that Ohanesian tells in her first novel, Orhan's Inheritance. Ohanesian was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction and Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers.

Location: 

51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925
The Miracle Girl By Andrew Roe Cover Image
ISBN: 9781616203603
Availability: Out of Print
Published: Algonquin Books - April 21st, 2015

Orhan's Inheritance By Aline Ohanesian Cover Image
ISBN: 9781616203740
Availability: Out of Print
Published: Algonquin Books - April 7th, 2015