About
Rose is what my parents call me:
Dzovinar, their rose by the sea.
Dzovinar (“zill-ven-ar”) lives with her family in Armenia, where the hillside is dotted with sheep and the apricot trees bloom every spring. She loves her home—but one day, soldiers storm her village and she returns to an empty house.
Their parents gone, Dzovinar and her sister are forced to flee. Afraid and alone, they journey across the desert, then over the ocean: first to France and then to America, where they hope a new future will bloom.
Based on the true story of the author’s great-grandmother, Rose by the Sea is a fierce yet hopeful account of surviving the Armenian Genocide. Changed but not lost, Dzovinar takes root in a new land—forever a rose by the sea.
Art direction and design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian
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Availability
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