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.
A Trip to the Stars
Year
2000
Pages
512
Audience
young adult
Description
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.
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