A Trip to the Stars

At a Manhattan planetarium in 1965, a boy is kidnapped from his young adoptive aunt, an event that profoundly alters the rest of their lives. In an epic tale of love and destiny, A Trip to the Stars charts their paths over the next fifteen years, as they search for each other and in the process, discover themselves.

When ten-year-old Loren is whisked away by strangers, he believes he has been mistaken for another child. But his abductor turns out to be a blood relative – his great-uncle Junius Samax, a wealthy former gambler who lives in a converted Las Vegas hotel, surrounded by a priceless collection of art and antiquities, and a host of idiosyncratic guests, each in search of the lost treasures of the universe. Finding his own place in Samax's magical world, Loren pieces together the story of his mother, and the complicated history that led to his adoption shortly before she died.

But in New York, Loren's  aunt, Mala, knows only that he has disappeared. Distraught after her year-long search for him proves fruitless, she quits college and enlists in the Navy Nursing Corps at the height of the Vietnam War. On a hospital ship in the South Pacific, her grief over Loren is subsumed by her love for a wounded navigator. Yet just as she opens her heart, he too vanishes – pronounced missing in action on his next mission. Devastated again, Mala begins a restless ten-year journey, moving from island to island around the globe, hoping to overcome the losses that have transformed her life.

Fusing imagination, scholarship, and suspense with remarkable narrative skill, Nicholas Christopher builds a story of tremendous scope as he traces the intricate latticework of Mala and Loren's lives. Each remains separate from the other, but both are tied in ways they cannot imagine – until the final, miraculous chapter of this extraordinary novel comes to an end.

But Alma knows only that Loren has disappeared. After a full year spent searching for him in vain, distraught and confused, she joins the Navy and is sent to Vietnam. While serving on a hospital ship she falls in love with a wounded navigator – who recovers only to go missing in action on his next mission. Devastated, Alma begins a peripatetic, restless existence, moving from island to island in the South Pacific, hoping to overcome the loss that has pervaded her life.

With remarkable narrative skill, Nicholas Christopher builds an intricate latticework of Alma and Loren's lives over the next fifteen years. Each remains separate from the other, but both are tied in ways they cannot imagine – until the final, miraculous chapter of this extraordinary novel comes to an end.