"As long as you know the stars, you will never be lost." ...The Koran says that Allah gave us the stars to be our guides. "Everything depends on the stars.  From them you can tell time and distance and you can find your way home."

Najmah, a young Afghan girl whose name means, "star," suddenly finds herself alone when her father and older brother are conscripted by the Taliban and her mother and newborn brother are killed in an air raid.  Elaine, whose Islamic name is Nusrat, is also on her own.  An American, she has come to Pakistan with her Afghan doctor husband so that he might run a clinic in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan.  She waits out the war, and awaits her husband's safe return, while teaching refugee children in Peshawar in her garden under the persimmon tree.  Najmah's father had always assured her that the stars would take care of her, just as Nusrat's husband had promised that they would tell Nusrat where he was and that he was safe.  As the young girl and the woman look to he skies for answers, their fates entwine.  Najmah, seeking refuge and hoping to find her father and brother, begins the perilous journey through the mountains to cross the border into Pakistan.  And Nusrat's persimmon-tree school awaits Najmah's arrival.  Together, they both seek their way home.

Known for her award-winning fiction set in Asia, Suzanne Fisher Staples revisits that part of the world in this heartrending new novel set in 2001-2002 Afghanistan and Pakistan.

From the dust jacket