The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise and progressive culture in Kabul. But in 1978, a communist coup shatters the ten-year-old girl’s world. When the president and Sitara’s entire family are assassinated, only she survives.
Smuggled from the scene by a soldier named Shair, Sitara finds her way to the home of a female American diplomat, who adopts her. In the United States Sitara takes on a new name – Aryana Shepherd – and eventually becomes a renowned surgeon. A survivor, Aryana has refused to look back, choosing instead to bury the trauma and devastating loss she endured.
But thirty years after that fatal night in Kabul, her world is rocked when an elderly patient appears in her exam room – a man Aryana never expected to see again. It is Shair, the soldier who saved her, yet may have murdered her entire family. Seeing him awakens Aryana’s fury and desire for answers – and, perhaps, revenge. Realizing that she cannot go on without learning the truth, Aryana embarks on a quest that takes her back to Kabul – now a battle ground between the corrupt government and the fundamentalist Taliban – and through shadowy memories of the world she loved and lost.
Bold, illuminating, heartbreaking, yet hopeful, Sparks Like Stars is a story of home – of America and Afghanistan, tragedy and survival, reinvention and remembrance, told in Nadia Hashimi’s singular voice.