This is the story of a small town in Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire told in the richly varied voices of the men and women-Armenians, Christians, Muslims-whose lives are intertwined and rooted there: Iskander, the potter and local fount of wisdom; Philotei, the Christian girl of legendary beauty, courted almost from infancy by Ibrahim the goatherd, a great love that culminates in tragedy and madness. When jihad is declared against...