“A powerful story of cultural ties, veiled existence, and deep-seated beliefs.”
– Literary R&R
“At the time all the two girls knew was that they couldn’t bear to spend the day of the national university entrance exam combing wool or beating carpets. They got out of chores just long enough to wedge a No. 2 pencil under the village exit door with faint hope of stopping it before it locked them in forever.”
The two girls, Didem and Sevgi, manage to make it out of their Turkish village and into a university. Silk Armor is the story of how they did that—the betrayal that neither girl can escape—and how that betrayal influenced their lives in the university, after Didem meets and begins a secret love affair with Victor, an American teacher at the university. The daunting and relentless obstacles their relationship faces leads them into plans of escape.
This is also the story of what happens after the events at the university, when the author and Victor travel back to the U.S., making discoveries along the way that lead to tragic consequences.
Author Claire Sydenham weaves these three stories together with wit, sympathy and an insider’s perspective, using her own first-person experience as an English teacher in Turkey to give an account of the real challenges and heart-wrenching choices a young Turkish woman faces.
Read an excerpt in PDF: Chapter One
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