Dragons & Violins recounts the extraordinary early life of American immigrant George Edgar, born to an Assyrian family in Persia (now Iran) as the Turks waged genocide against Assyrian, Armenian and Pontic Greek Christians. George's family escaped to southern Russia amid the chaos of World War I, the Russian revolution and civil war, fleeing to Constantinople and finally making their way to Ellis Island and the United States on July 4th, 1921.
As a poor immigrant kid surviving the Great Depression in New York, George encountered renowned figures like Yankee great Joe DiMaggio, violinist Fritz Kreisler, and gangster Dutch Schultz. He married the beautiful "Miss Assyria" of the 1933 Chicago World's Fair and was barred from participating as a gymnast in the 1936 Olympics because he wasn't a native-born American. But as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers serving with the 989th Engineer Treadway Bridge Company in World War II, he helped build dozens of assault bridges in combat at the front lines of the Allies' push from the beaches of Normandy on D-Day plus 4 to the outskirts of Berlin.
Perennially struggling to gain the respect of his father, George overcame extraordinary odds to achieve his one true dream?to be a violinist. An epic and captivating immigrant saga, George Edgar's singular life unfolds against the backdrop of some of the most consequential events of the first half of the twentieth century. An epic and captivating immigrant story?an American story.
