Answer: Peter Balakian's compelling memoir is about growing up American in a family that was haunted by a past too fraught with terror to be spoken of openly. Black Dog of Fate is set in the affluent New Jersey suburbs where Balakian, the firstborn son of his generation, grew up in a close, extended family, at the center of what was a quintessential American baby boom childhood. Yet despite this calm exterior at the center of his family's memories lay the dark specter of the trauma his forebears had experienced as the Ottoman Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians in 1915, the century's first genocide. The unforgettable figure of the story is Balakian's grandmother, a survivor, and widow of the Genocide who speaks in fragments of metaphor and myth as she cooks up Armenian delicacies. Balakian moves from childhood memory to history, to his ancestors' lives, and lastly to the story of a poet's coming of age in the unfolding recovery of his sense of identity.
Step-by-step explanation: