Drawing on accounts from over a dozen witnesses, most never before published, the author recounts the life and death of one village. He follows his father, Boghos Kezerian Kaloosdian, and other townspeople from the first intimations of violence through deportations, separations, massacres, and escapes, to the establishment of diasporal communities. With striking immediacy, the author presents Tadem as a microcosm of the Genocide and argues that the Turks used the outbreak of World War I as a cover for atrocities motivated by religious hatred and greed.