The Secret Sister

A third-generation Greek American visits his ancestral homeland, and discovers a century of family secrets, in this “hauntingly poignant” novel (World Literature Today).

From the burning quay at Smyrna to present-day Manhattan, the Argyriou family has been pursued by disaster. In the 1922 Greco-Turkish War, little Frosso and her sister Erasmia flee as Turkish soldiers descend on their village. Orphaned and destitute, the two girls have only each other to rely on as they scrape together a life in the immigrant slums around Athens.

Eighteen years later, Europe is stewing and Erasmia is offered a chance for a new life in America by her fiancé. Compelled to leave by the impending war, Erasmia boards the ship New Greece with a heavy heart, but before the ship reaches harbor her grief takes hold and Erasmia throws herself into the ocean—leading her fiancé to marry her surviving sister instead.

Now Erasmia’s great-nephew, who has never seen Greece, will journey to the crisis-ridden country in the twenty-first century to uncover the shadowy past of the Argyriou family—in this atmospheric and psychologically complex novel that explores the blurred line between history and memory.