Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, sitara zalmani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar daoud, Afghanistan s progressive President, and sitara s beloved father, his right-hand man. But the ten-year-old sitara s world is shattered when Communists stage a coup, assassinating the President and sitara s entire family. Only she survives. Smuggled out of the palace by a guard named Shair, sitara finds her way to the home of a female American diplomat, who adopts her and raises her in America. In her new country, sitara takes on a new name aryana shepherd and throws herself into her studies, eventually becoming a renowned surgeon. A survivor, aryana has refused to look back, choosing instead to bury the trauma and devastating loss she endured. New York, 2018: forty years after that fatal night in Kabul, aryana s world is rocked again when an elderly patient appears in her examination room a man she never expected to see again. It is chair, the soldier who saved her, yet may have murdered her entire family. Seeing him awakens aryana s fury and desire for answers, perhaps, revenge. Realizing that she cannot go on without finding the truth, aryana embarks on a quest that takes her back to Kabul battleground between the corrupt government and the fundamentalist taliban and through shadowy memories of the world she loved and lost. Bold, illuminating, heart-breaking, 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.