New Book: ‘Dance of the Banished’

Dance of the Banished
By Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Publication Date: Aug. 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-927485-65-1
Price: $15.95 (PB with French flaps); 240 pp.
YA novel ages 12+

Pajama Press recently announced the publication of Dance of the Banished by award-winning author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch.

‘Dance of the Banished’
‘Dance of the Banished’

As the world commemorates the centennial of World War I, Skrypuch has been appointed to Canada’s First World War Internment Recognition Endowment Council as the internee descendent representative. The granddaughter of a World War I internee, she has often explored this important but largely unknown topic in her books, including Silver Threads and Prisoners in the Promised Land: The Ukrainian Internment Diary of Anya Soloniuk.

Skrypuch returns to the subject of Canada’s internment camps with Dance of the Banished, a young adult novel that also deals with the Armenian Genocide. Based on true events, this compelling story of love and hope, which will be published on the 100th anniversary of Canada’s World War I War Measures Act, will help commemorate humanity’s courage and resilience to survive against terrible odds.

Ali and Zeynep are young and in love. But the two Anatolian teenagers are caught by circumstances that threaten to separate them forever. While Ali has found passage to Canada, war breaks out in 1914; he is declared an enemy alien and sent to an internment camp. Meanwhile, left behind in a country plunged into war and revolution, Zeynep is determined to stay alive and—despite the impossible odds—cross a continent and an ocean to find Ali again. First, though, she must find a way to save her Christian-Armenian neighbors from the horrors of the Armenian Genocide.

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is the multi-award winning author of more than a dozen historical picture books, chapter books, and juvenile and young adult novels, including three other novels about the Armenian Genocide: The Hunger, Nobody’s Child, and Daughter of War. Her first work of narrative non-fiction, Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War, won the Red Cedar Information Book Award, was an OLA Red Maple Honour Book, and was nominated for the Hamilton Literary Award. It was followed in 2012 by One Step at a Time: A Vietnamese Child Finds Her Way, winner of the 2014 OLA Silver Birch Non-Fiction Award. In 2008, in recognition of her outstanding achievement in the development of the culture of Ukraine, Skrypuch was awarded the Order of Princess Olha, which was bestowed upon her personally by the president of Ukraine. She lives in Brantford, Ontario.

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