Aryana Shepherd is a survivor. Born Sitara Zalmani, she was daughter of a prominent and cosmopolitan family in Kabul, her beloved father the right hand of President Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive leader. But in 1978, when Sitara is only ten years old, the President and dozens of others were assassinated when armed men invaded the lavish Arg Palace. Sitara’s family was there. Only Sitara survived. Smuggled out of the palace by Shair, a soldier who may have murdered her family, Sitara finds her way to the home of a female American diplomat, and from there to the US. Adopted and raised as the diplomat’s daughter, Sitara changes her name and eventually becomes Dr. Aryana Shepherd, an overachieving surgeon who has never fully reckoned with the trauma of her past. But 40 years after that fatal night in Kabul, an elderly patient appears in her examining room and Aryana’s world comes crashing down. It is Shair, the soldier who saved her life. He does not recognize her, but seeing him awakens Aryana’s fury and desire for answers and, perhaps, revenge. Her quest for truth will take her back to Kabul—now simmering under Taliban rule—and through shadowy memories of the world she loved, and lost, when she was only a child. Bold, insightful, and illuminating, Sparks Like Stars is a story of America and Afghanistan, tragedy, survival, and reinvention, as only Nadia Hashimi could write it.