Gardens of Water

Author Alan Drew offers a vivid, picturesque first novel that is equally wonderful in its narration as in its prose. Narrator Mark Bramhall captures this story of a teenage Kurdish girl who falls in love with an American boy over the objections of his father. Bramhall's understated performance offers pitch-perfect dialogue complete with an astounding array of accents and voices that are as unique as the story itself. Bramhall's narration is solid throughout, never breaking away from the remarkable story that unfolds in our minds like a theatrical production. Listening to this audiobook reminds us of just what story narration can offer when done with precision and excellence. A memorable experience. L.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

October 15, 2007
In Drew’s well-intentioned if overwrought first novel, cultures clash as a teenaged Kurdish girl and an American boy fall in love over the objection of the girl’s father, a Muslim Kurd living in Istanbul. Sinan, a shop owner, tries to keep his American upstairs neighbors, Marcus Hamm and his family, at arm’s length. But this is impossible after an earthquake devastates Istanbul, and Sinan and his family end up living in a tent city provided by American missionaries. Marcus, the director of a missionary school, lost his wife in the earthquake; she was found dead, shielding Sinan’s son, who was buried alive for three days before being rescued. Now, Sinan watches as his America-obsessed daughter, Irem, falls in love with Marcus’s bipolar son, Dylan, and his impressionable younger son, Ismail, slowly becomes converted to Christianity at the camp. The story moves inexorably toward a climax in which Sinan’s Muslim pride and Marcus’s Christian proselytizing collide with predictably tragic results. Though some may find the ideological conflict that provides the narrative thrust too textbookish, Drew, who lived in Istanbul at the time of the Marmara earthquake, effortlessly transports readers to a wrecked Istanbul and finds shards of hope in the mountains of rubble.