Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Helena: An Odyssey

Helena: An Odyssey

Taylor-Watts, Carolyn

Paperback

Historical Fiction

ISBN10: 1502708523
ISBN13: 9781502708526
Publisher: Createspace
Published: Oct 23 2014
Pages: 326
Weight: 0.96
Height: 0.68 Width: 5.98 Depth: 9.02
Language: English
Helena: an Odyssey is an absorbing saga of myth and obsession, of a family haunted by their illustrious Byzantine past and a compulsion to redeem it. Bittersweet love stories are set against wars, forced population exchanges and confusion about ethnic identity. Woven throughout lies the power and symbolism of hair. Helena's daughter Georgia, narrating the tale, begins in 1908 when her great grandparent the Greek Yiannis Kouvalis and two sons set out on an epic journey from a poor Turkish village to glittering Smyrna on the Aegean Coast. Eventually succeeding as prosperous merchants, the sons marry and have children. But the Young Turks are rising, and the ensuing Greco-Turkish wars culminate in the fiery destruction of Smyrna. Ethnic cleansing follows. Surviving remnants of the Kouvalis family are reduced once more to poverty and forced into what, to them, is an alien Greece. The burden of redemption passes down the generations to fall, finally, on the unlikely Helena who longs only to create beautiful hair and through it, achieve international fame. But she is distracted by her intense love for local boy Stephan. Thwarted in her attempts to follow him when he leaves for the coal mines of Australia, she travels instead to her sister in Toronto. It is here where her real heartaches begin.

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