On a Night of a Thousand Stars Summary and Reviews

Book Summary

In this moving, emotional narrative of love and resilience, a young couple confronts the start of Argentina's Dirty War in the 1970s, and a daughter searches for truth twenty years later.

New York, 1998. Santiago Larrea, a wealthy Argentine diplomat, is holding court alongside his wife, Lila, and their daughter, Paloma, a college student and budding jewelry designer, at their annual summer polo match and soiree. All seems perfect in the Larreas' world—until an unexpected party guest from Santiago's university days shakes his usually unflappable demeanor. The woman's cryptic comments spark Paloma's curiosity about her father's past, of which she knows little.
 
When the family travels to Buenos Aires for Santiago's UN ambassadorial appointment, Paloma is determined to learn more about his life in the years leading up to the military dictatorship of 1976. With the help of a local university student, Franco Bonetti, an activist member of H.I.J.O.S.—a group whose members are the children of the desaparecidos, or the "disappeared," men and women who were forcibly disappeared by the state during Argentina's "Dirty War"—Paloma unleashes a chain of events that not only leads her to question her family and her identity, but also puts her life in danger.

In compelling fashion, On a Night of a Thousand Stars speaks to relationships, morality, and identity during a brutal period in Argentinian history, and the understanding—and redemption—people crave in the face of tragedy.

Justice From a Windowless Basement in Buenos Aires
(and How I Came to Write This Novel)

In 1995, a former commander of Argentina's Air Force publicly confessed to drugging political prisoners and throwing them out of airplanes during the country's 1976-83 military dictatorship. Thousands of people, known as the "desaparecidos," were kidnapped, tortured and killed during this period, but the military and security forces went largely unpunished. I had moved back to Buenos Aires and was working as a television producer when the commander's confession hit the newsstands.  

Much had been written about the students, working class people, political activists, professionals and intellectuals who were forcibly disappeared. Little was known, however, about the sons and daughters left behind. Familiares, a Human Rights organization, had recently granted a space to a group of young people to meet on Thursdays. They called themselves H.I.J.O.S., an acronym for "Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Forgetting and Silence."

When I was a child in 1970s Buenos Aires, my father, a psychiatrist, was secretly approached by government authorities to examine political prisoners. He turned down the offer. He was also a writer, and his editor was disappeared, potentially putting my father at risk. Moreover, psychiatrists and psychotherapists would be targeted during the dictatorship. Fortunately, we were able to freely leave the country before the coup d'état. So, I wasn't quite sure what drove me to attend an H.I.J.O.S. meeting. But, when I entered the windowless basement of the Familiares building one Thursday night with a vague explanation, I was invited to stay.

Everyone went around the room introducing themselves. Some spoke confidently. "My name is Nicolas, I'm 19 and my mother is a desaparecida." Others spoke in voices conveying pain. "I'm Malena. My parents were held captive in E.S.M.A." E.S.M.A., formerly known as the Higher School of the Mechanics of the Navy, housed the most notorious clandestine torture center. When it was my turn, I said I wanted to learn more about what had happened to the people of my generation affected by the so-called Dirty War.

As the meeting came to end, my reason for being there became clear. I would accompany these sons and daughters, learn their stories and, if possible, record them. Those I approached were eager to talk. Most had grown up without ever sharing their experiences. Some had lived with false identities and been forced to conceal the fates of their parents from friends and teachers. Others would tell me that, for years, their grandparents lied to them about their parents' whereabouts, hoping to shield them from the horror. All but one person wanted their real names to be used. As one hijo told me, "It would be awful to think that we still have to hide from who we are and where we come from."

In the time I spent with the group, I joined them in protests and travelled to the first national meeting of H.I.J.O.S. in Cordoba province. It was around this time, I decided I would record video footage and make a documentary.

As the group gained prominence, the Argentine secret service started making itself visible to the group. Some members began receiving anonymous, threatening phone calls. A founding member of H.I.J.O.S. had her apartment broken into. One day, after my camera crew filmed an escrache – a form of protest that consists of publicly confronting, exposing and condemning a past perpetrator of human rights violations who has gone unpunished— a green Ford Falcon, the ubiquitous car of the 1970s death squads, slowly followed my producer and me as we walked, parking across the street from my apartment building.

I hadn't planned on leaving my beloved childhood city ever again until I met my future husband and we moved to New York in the early 2000s. My documentary remained unfinished, but the stories stayed with me. They will never leave me.  

One morning, I woke up to the remnants of a dream about a young woman, the daughter of Argentines, who grows up in New York and, on a visit to Buenos Aires, uncovers a family secret. That dream would eventually become my debut novel On a Night of a Thousand Stars.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. The novel alternates between the perspectives of Paloma in 1998 and Valentina in 1973. What parallels did you draw between both characters' lives in terms of passion and personality? Did you prefer one timeline to the other?
2. In the first half of the novel, we see the gradual erosion of civil liberties in Argentina, such as the elimination of the free press, the acceleration of arrests, and the state's sponsorship of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance. How did these changes lay the foundation for the atrocities that were later committed by the dictatorship? Were you familiar with Argentina's "Dirty War" before reading On a Night of a Thousand Stars? How did reading about these events affect you?
3. HIJOS, The Sons and Daughters for Identity ...