Forty Thorns

A kaleidoscopic scheme of Turkish history, blending past with present and centering on 60 critical years in the evolution of Ataturk's modern Turkey, as seen through the eyes of a woman of great spirit, the remarkable Adalet, whose epic story parallels her nation s struggle riddled with wars, heroes, heroines, intense romantic adventures, dramatic change and the ongoing contest for women's rights.

Her struggle is survival for the sake of tomorrow, but how long can she continue in the name of love? In a saga that sweeps her from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic and all across Anatolia and back, Adalet grapples tremendous change. Her's is the universal 20th century woman's dilemma of repeatedly repositioning herself. Forced out from the western provinces of the weakening Ottoman Empire and into the heart of Anatolia and the establishment of the new Turkish Republic, Adalet embodies both the dreams and struggles of today's woman. She is disowned for her love. She fights for the new ideals of tomorrow and for her children. She is engendered by war and an era that gave Turkish women a secular voice even before much of the West. But she never is able to buck the traditions and dilemmas faced by a woman determined to own her independence. Adalet was born into the grace and education of comfortable Ottoman society, where European ideals fostered the uprising of the Young Turks. She is one of the many builders as wives and mothers of the new state whose bold pride secured a revolution. As Adalet's life folds dreams into deception, love into rejection and birth into loss, it is her inner strength, a spirit forged in both East and West that stands down and rebuilds from the deception, vice, jealousy, rejection and the loss of one child and the death of another. Can she find the inner strength she needs? In a collision of the mystic East with the pragmatic West, the fantastic tales of Adalet's story connect as intricately as designs in a magic carpet. She moves from harem to skyscraper, from star-crossed girl who elopes with the blacksmith's son to a governor's wife to a divorcee who finds herself penniless by mid-life. Can she outlive the losses? Will her spirit prevail?