The Thumb Bread Sisters - featuring Fusun, Gonca, and Arzu Esendemir

For Fusun, Gonca, and Arzu Esendemir, opening a restaurant was a last-ditch solution to tragic circumstances. Their success was borne out of necessity, responsibility, desperation. Their family story is straight out of an epic novel.

There is unbearable sadness and loss. But also resourcefulness, grit, determination, and triumph. The Esendemir sisters persevered in the face of hardship, staying true to the Turkish immigrant culture in which they were raised, and never wavered in their love for each other and their parents.