Powerful, emotional, and beautifully written, Alan Drew’s
stunning first novel brings to life two unforgettable
families–one Kurdish, one American–and the sacrifice
and love that bind them together.

In a small town outside Istanbul, Sinan Basioglu, a devout Muslim,
and his wife, Nilüfer, are preparing for their nine-year-old
son’s coming-of-age ceremony. Their headstrong
fifteen-year-old daughter, İrem, resents the attention her
brother, Ismail, receives from their parents. For her, there was no
such festive observance–only the wrapping of her head in a
dark scarf and strict rules that keep her hidden away from boys and
her friends. But even before the night of the celebration,
İrem has started to change, to the dismay of her Kurdish
father. What Sinan doesn’t know is that much of her
transformation is due to her secret relationship with their
neighbor, Dylan, the seventeen-year-old American son of expatriate
teachers.

İrem sees Dylan as the gateway to a new life, one that will
free her from the confines of conservative Islam. Yet the young
man’s presence and Sinan’s growing awareness of their
relationship affirms Sinan’s wish to move his family to the
safety of his old village, a place where his children would be
sheltered from the cosmopolitan temptations of Istanbul, and where,
as the civil war in the south wanes, he hopes to raise his children
in the Kurdish tradition.

But when a massive earthquake hits in the middle of the night, the
Basioglu family is faced with greater challenges. Losing
everything, they are forced to forage for themselves, living as
refugees in their own country. And their survival becomes dependent
on their American neighbors, to whom they are unnervingly indebted.
As love develops between İrem and Dylan, Sinan makes a series
of increasingly dangerous decisions that push him toward a betrayal
that will change everyone’s lives forever.

The deep bonds among father, son, and daughter; the tension between
honoring tradition and embracing personal freedom; the conflict
between cultures and faiths; the regrets of age and the passions of
youth–these are the timeless themes Alan Drew weaves into a
brilliant fiction debut.

GARDENS OF WATER © Copyright 2011 by Alan Drew. Reprinted with
permission by Random House. All rights reserved.