Kirk Diken

by Judy Light Ayyildiz

Based on the Oral Memoir of a Turkish Revolutionary Woman,
the epic Forty Thorns blends past with present in a war-torn
love story that parallels the new nation during the critical years
of the emerging state with its dramatic events, changes, and the
universal women’s struggle for self-determination.

328 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2011

About the author

Judy Light Ayyildiz, a graduate of the Hollins University Creative Writing Program, has taught creative writing to all education levels. As a graduate of the Marshall University Teachers College with a major in voice, she spent many years in classrooms and on stage as performer, director, and conductor. She has been an instructor and presenter at literary workshops, international conferences on poetry, writing, and women’s studies. Internationally published and translated, she was an editor of Artemis, Artists and Writers from the Blue Ridge for 13 years, a Blue Ridge Writers Conference founder, President of the Medical Auxiliary and founder/director of the acclaimed RAMA Chorus. Author of 11 books in 5 genres include Forty Thorns a novel (translated into Turkish), poetry Mud River, and memoir Nothing but Time, A Triumph over Trauma.New York Quarterly, Mickle Street Review, the new renaissance, Sow’s Ear, Pig Iron Press, Hawaii Pacific Review, Black Water Review, Northeast Journal, Kalliope, The McGuffin, the Nazim Hikmet Festival Chapbook. Judy was featured in professional biographies in Women in Dialogue, an international anthology, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and in Kirklareli’ni Gecmisten Gelecege Tasiyanlar (Outstanding Persons Who Have Come and Gone in Kirklareli,Turkey) by historian Nazif Karacam, and story translated into Italian in the anthology, International Women Writing Today, Rubbettino Editore, 2007. Honors include YWCA Women of Achievement in Education, Virginia Commission of the Arts grants, various poetry short story prizes, Daughters of Ataturk award, Turkish Forum award, College Bookstores Best Book nominee, Gusto Poet Discovery Winner, VCCA Fellow, and JPX International Literary Novel 1st Place. A volume of poetry Intervals, Appalachia to Istanbul is forthcoming spring 2015. Judy has been married for over 50 years to a surgeon. She and her husband, Vedii, have three talented and creative children and two extraordinary grandchildren. Judy is currently completing a memoir titled, The West Virginia Diet.

Reviews

[Betsy Ashton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew nothing about the role Turkey played in various early 20th century wars until Judy Ayyildiz introduced me to Adalet, whose life was set against a sweeping panorama of the Balkan Wars, the fall of the Ottoman empire, the rise of Ataturk.

We meet Adalet shortly after her death. Lee, the narrator, is Adalet's American daughter-in-law. Through flashbacks Adalet's story emerges through beautiful prose and soaring landscape.

Adalet marries young and unwisely as it turns out. At first she calls her husband Burhan "Handsome" but he's not always kind. Through a tumultuous marriage, seven children, multiple infidelities on Burhan's part, Adalet holds the family together, remembering that she's the granddaughter of Emin Aga from Thrace and putting her faith in Ataturk and the rise of modern Turkey.

Read today against the troubles going on in the Middle East and in Turkey in particular, the novel gives great perspective on the challenges of creating a modern, democratic state in a region torn by centuries of strife.

This book should be savored, read slowly with a good cup of hot tea at the elbow. The language is lyrical, the setting spectacular. You don't want to miss a word.