In the late 1890s, Vartanoosh Tarzian escapes with her parents from Turkish massacres in their province of Erzeroum, Armenia, to Beirut, the little girl and her brother riding in saddlebags on a camel. Left in Syria in the care of a bachelor uncle while her mother emigrates to America and her father travels to England for medical treatment, she finally rejoins her mother in New York City in 1903. Vartanoosh is placed in The Sheltering Arms, an Episcopal home for "half-orphans" in what is now Harlem, where she learns to speak, write and read English and is taught American customs and hygiene. Returning to her parents' home, she comes to know Thomas Alva Edison while working in their tailor shop in Orange, New Jersey. Although her dream is to become a nurse, her parents insist that she marry, which she does in 1913, shepherding her family of six children through two World Wars and the Depression. VARTANOOSH is the true story of a remarkable, independent woman, told amidst a rich tapestry of Armenian customs and life in Armenia and America.