Nectar

By Laura Susan Johnson

Nectar tells of the atrocities of the Armenian genocide through the story of one young woman’s lifetime—the family she lost, the love she found, and her determination to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beaten Track Publishing
• Release date: Dec 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781786451880

Laura Susan Johnson

Laura Susan Johnson has been writing since the age of eleven, cutting her teeth on stories of the family dogs and cats. She has written two novels: CRUSH and BRIGHT and three short stories, BURDENS, OUR HOUSE and COLD FOOT. All of these projects are now available here at Smashwords. CRUSH is also available in print at Beaten Track Publishing.She is currently working on another short story entitled OLD CARS and recently completed her second novel, BRIGHT. She lives in Idaho, Oregon, Arkansas and California.Inspired by gay couples she took care of in her career as a hospice nurse, Laura Susan began penning her novel CRUSH in August 2010.Laura Susan has applied much of her own life experience to her characters in CRUSH and BRIGHT. She is now working on her third novel, ARMOUR (Aug. 2016).

Book preview

Nectar

Nectar

Laura Susan Johnson

Part of

NEVER TOO LATE

A collection of stories featuring

LGBTQIA characters aged 50+

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Beaten Track

www.beatentrackpublishing.com

Nectar

SMASHWORDS EDITION

First published 2017 by Beaten Track Publishing

Copyright © 2017 Kimberly Renee Ohanesian (writing as Laura Susan Johnson) at Smashwords

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/LauraJohnson8888

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

ISBN: 978 1 78645 188 0

www.beatentrackpublishing.com

Nectar tells of the atrocities of the Armenian genocide through the story of one young woman’s lifetime—the family she lost, the love she found, and her determination to survive.

WARNING: This story contains disturbing depictions of genocide, infanticide, torture, rape and violence as described by the many survivors of the first genocide of the twentieth century.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Yeraz, The Ottoman Empire, 1915

About Laura Susan Johnson

By Laura Susan Johnson

Never Too Late

Beaten Track Publishing

Dedication

This story is dedicated to my great-grandmother Alice, my great-grandfather Yeghizar, the family they lost, and to the 1.5 million Armenians whose ghosts roam the Holy Mountains.

To Serj Tankian, thank you for the awareness you’ve given the world through music.

Yeraz, The Ottoman Empire, 1915

I would speak as a child, but I’m not a child. I have not been a child since I was fifteen years of age, when these unimaginably horrific atrocities occurred.

In the times that try a child’s soul, imagination is her best friend.

When the Ottomans invaded my little kingdom, which in ancient times sprawled for hundreds of miles east, west, north and south, I had no choice but to resort to the world within my mind. For decades already, they had treated us as second-class citizens because we believed in Jesus. To me, God is God, whatever name you prefer to call Him by. Allah is just the Arabic word for God, is it not?

We believed in different things than the Empire, and so we were forbidden to bear arms or own horses, and unfair taxes were proposed. Our people began to bristle under these laws.