The Crimson Field

A tour-de-force, Rosie Malek-Yonan's "The Crimson Field" is a brilliant and gritty historical and literary novel with enormous implications. Uncompromising and un-flinching, it is based on real events and true family chronicles set to the backdrop of the Assyrian Massacres of 1914-1918 in Urmi, Iran. This is a unique triumph in that the Assyrian tragedy unfolds in an epic novel, the first of its kind, supported by actual painstakingly researched historical facts of a nation's raw and agonizing past; a nation that has never been fully healed of its bleeding wounds and still grieves for its fallen martyrs. Malek-Yonan's intense interest in her family s history that cannot be separated from her Assyrian heritage and historical events that have swept that nation in a deluge of bloodbath, began more than two decades ago. As she embarked on her journey of discovery, searching family documents and probing for her roots, she found a commonality with her Assyrian people who experienced the same trenchant attacks as her family at the hands of the Turks and Kurds nearly a century ago. "The Crimson Field" is a harsh, yet poetic, narrative of the author s maternal grand-mother, Maghdleta s lifelong struggle to come to terms with a momentary decision made in haste during the brutality of the Assyrian Massacres and Genocide. "The Crimson Field" is a reconstruction of history, brick by brick, reassembling the un-imaginable losses suffered by an Assyrian woman and those of her nation. Rosie Malek-Yonan s high-spirited approach affords the reader a rare glimpse into the lives of a nation bereaved and long imagined to be forgotten. This epic novel is a tender reminder of the resilience of a people in their quest for survival. "The Crimson Field" is the author s Requiem Mass for her Assyria.