The Great Fire is the thrilling story of a Methodist Minister and a principled American naval officer who rescued tens of thousands refugees during the Turkish genocide of Armenian and Greek Christians —a tale of bravery, morality, and politics, published to coincide with the genocide’s centennial.

The modern era’s first genocide swept Turkey in the early 20th century. The final episode was the burning of Smyrna, a rich, sophisticated and multicultural city on Turkey’s Aegean coast. The fire created an enormous humanitarian crisis. The world’s great powers refused to intervene on behalf of the city’s residents who, after surviving the fire, were being raped and killed by the Turkish army.
Asa K. Jennings, a minister from upstate New York, stepped forward with an audacious plan. It required the cooperation of the U.S. Navy, which he got through a brave officer, Lt. Commander Halsey Powell, a Kentucky native and hero of WWI.

By turns harrowing and inspiring, The Great Fire uses eyewitness accounts, documents, and survivor narratives to bring this episode—extraordinary for its brutality as well as its heroism—to life.