Part one of the Anatolian Blues trilogy Told with great affection for his characters Selim
Özdogan's trilogy traces out the life of Gül a Turkish girl who grows up in 1950s Anatolia and
then moves to Germany as a migrant worker. Book one details her initially idyllic childhood
ruptured by her mother's early death. Ever close to her loving father Gül grows into a
warm-hearted hard-working young woman. The Blacksmith's Daughter is a novel full of carefree
summers and hard winters old wives' tales and young people's ambitions - the melancholy beauty
and pain of an ordinary life.
