Not Even My Name: A True Story

Not Even My Name documents the genocide of Pontic Greeks and Armenians in Turkey during and after World War I, which ended the 3,000-year history of the Pontic Greeks (named for the Pontic Mountain range below the Black Sea). Nearly 2 million Pontic Greeks and Armenians were killed, and millions more were exiled. The book recounts Sano Halo's survival story, as told to her daughter Thea, and includes an account of their trip to Turkey seventy years after Sano's exile to search for her childhood home. At age ten, Sano was removed from her pastoral mountain life and forced on a death march that killed her family. Stripped of her possessions and even her name, she was sold into marriage at fifteen to a man three times her age. The narrative follows Sano's marriage, her raising of ten children in New York City, and her evolution from a girl torn from her traditional life into a nurturing mother and determined woman navigating twentieth-century America.