A couple of years ago I was working on a graphic novel about the 1915 Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Young Turks. When I lived in Gyumri often when I’d visit a student’s house the grandmothers would read the coffee stains at the bottom of my cup (Armenian coffee is as thick as tar) and almost always my fortunes would be the same: I was very nice and would marry an Armenian and have lots of babies. That got me thinking about how useful soothsaying would have been back in 1915 when the Ottoman-Armenians were unaware of what their countrymen were about to do.

The story is about a young woman, Narine Abandian, who is told a different sort of future at the bottom of her coffee cup by her grandmother than she is normally use to hearing.