Description: Was it absurd to believe so many cultures could coexist in a region where war has never ceased? In 1922, Smyrna was the beautiful cosmopolitan city by the Aegean Sea that was home to Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, to name a few. Taking place during the first genocide of the 20
th
century,
The Sun Sets in Smyrna 1922
begins with Vicki who finds her grandmother's short, but revealing, story leading up to the expulsion of Christians from the city of Smyrna in modern-day Turkey. This book - the first of three books - examines the journey of Celia, Vicki's grandmother, a teenaged Greek girl, who must overcome the horrors of humanity's malevolence toward one another, and her desire to maintain the ideology she was taught to believe. Separated from what is left of her family, and trying to outrun enemy soldiers and the inferno that has engulfed her entire beloved city, Celia tries to understand what the effects of rape, torture and evil do to an entire generation. As history has repeatedly exposed, the innocents are those who make the greatest sacrifice, and also reveal themselves to be true heroes... even when it's inconvenient to acknowledge them.