DIGGING STARS, by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
The Digging Stars is a star cluster known by many names. It is most commonly called the Pleiades. Depending on who and where you are, it’s also referred to as the Seven Sisters or isiLimela, among other things. But no matter its name, in Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s excellent debut novel, “Digging Stars,” the cluster is a force, a symbol, a family heirloom.
The story opens with a daughter, Athandwa, and a father, Frank, reuniting for the first time in years in New York City. Athandwa and her family are from Zimbabwe, but when she was a child, Frank, who was inspired by the Digging Stars, moved to the United States, at first temporarily to study astrophysics at a Midwestern research school referred to only as the Program, and then permanently to pursue a career as an astronomer.
Now 11 years old, Athandwa is visiting New York to see her father and his new life, which, she didn’t realize, includes a new family composed of a girlfriend, Candice, and Candice’s son, Péralte. The plan is that she will stay four weeks and then, when she is 12, Frank will bring her to live with him in New York for good.
When he returns to Zimbabwe a year later to pick her up, however, Frank dies in a mysterious car crash that gets called an accident, though some speculate there is more to the story. The grief surrounding this cataclysmic death accompanies Athandwa for the next decade and eventually propels her to move to America to attend the Program herself and make her father proud.
