All the Glimmering Stars

All the Glimmering Stars (2024) is a historical fiction novel by Mark Sullivan based on true events in Uganda during the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency. When the LRA kidnaps Anthony Opoka from his home, he’s forced to become a child soldier and fight for more than a decade in notorious warlord Joseph Kony’s army. Because of the atrocities he’s forced to support, Anthony struggles with conflicting feelings of anger, shame, and even pride as he becomes a successful commander. Years later, he meets Florence Okori, another child soldier who is taken from her home at age 14. They fall in love and start a family while strategizing to escape from Kony and return to their old lives. Through their journeys, Sullivan explores themes related to psychological manipulation, love, and personal agency.

This guide uses the first hardcover edition of the novel published by Lake Union Publishing in 2024.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of sexual content, sexual violence, rape, suicidal ideation, graphic violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and death. In particular, much of the novel and guide focuses on Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army’s acts of terror against children, including graphic depictions of kidnapping, child death, child rape, and child sexual violence, as well as child enslavement, emotional abuse against children, and physical abuse against children.

Plot Summary

Anthony Opoka lives in a small village in Uganda. He’s proud of being one of the top students in his class and the fastest runner in his region. His father, George, teaches him about the land, navigating by the stars, and the importance of being a good person. However, at age 14, Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) kidnaps Anthony to fight as a soldier in their brutal war against the Ugandan government.

For several days, soldiers brutally march Anthony and thousands of other kidnapped children across Uganda and into the Sudan. When one child collapses from exhaustion, soldiers force Anthony and the others to stomp on him as the soldiers take their pictures and then tell them that they now can’t leave the LRA, since they’re murderers and can never return to civilian life. Starved and abused, the children are led into the Imatong Mountains.

Anthony meets his old running rival, Patrick, who has been an LRA soldier for several years. He takes Anthony to Kony, who preaches to 500 new recruits. Kony claims that he’s possessed by several spirits, who speak to the kidnapped children, and Anthony is overcome by awe and intrigue at Kony’s power.

Anthony and the 500 others are trained ruthlessly in the Imatong Mountains. Then, when the LRA battles against the Sudanese, the boys are forced to march at the front of the LRA. Unarmed, nude, and covered in shea butter, they link arms and sing as they lead the LRA into battle. Anthony survives, earning his place as a soldier.

In his first armed battle, Anthony is severely wounded in the shoulder. He spends weeks recovering and fears being killed due to his immobility. Instead, he’s trained to become a radioman, setting up radios and decoding messages sent between the LRA battalions. Anthony excels at the job, eventually earning a place as Kony’s personal radioman. He continually has mixed emotions, feeling proud of his success in the LRA while also recognizing their evil.

On one mission, Anthony goes with others to buy supplies from a nearby village. After an attack, Anthony stays with the injured shopkeeper, Mr. Mabior. As Mabior dies, he tells Anthony about internal suffering, explaining that different “voices” will always make Anthony suffer from things like want, despair, and anger. Anthony internalizes Mabior’s message, often using it to identify and overcome his different emotions.

Meanwhile, 14-year-old Florence Okori looks forward to attending secondary school, having taken a national test to determine her future. She barely survived malaria as a child and is dedicated to becoming a nurse. She lives with her father, Constantine, and her mother, Josca, who teach her how to garden, show her medicinal herbs that grow in the wild, and encourage her to pursue her dreams. However, like Anthony, Florence is kidnapped by LRA soldiers.

Florence is taken on a brutal, days-long march into the Sudan. She watches soldiers kill her brother, Owen, for falling behind, and they whip her and the other kidnapped children as part of their initiation. Eventually, they reach the LRA camp, where they meet Fatima, Kony’s primary wife.

Soldiers bathe and clothe Florence and another girl her age, Palmer, and then present them to LRA commanders. General Okaya chooses both her and Palmer as wives. They spend weeks in his compound doing chores, and Okaya rapes them at night. However, when he goes off to battle, Florence and Palmer are sent to work in a nearby field hospital.

Anthony excels as Kony’s radioman but continues to grapple with mixed emotions over his status in the LRA. While he can see the brutality of what they’re doing, he also takes pride in praise from Kony and his abilities as a signal caller. However, as he remembers Mabior’s teachings, he finally recognizes that Kony’s praise is just a form of manipulation. From that point forward, Anthony vows to find a way to escape Kony, recognizing his hypocrisy, weakness, and evil nature.

The LRA enters a battle that lasts several days near Jebel Lem in the Sudan. Anthony is forced to fight and is shot in his injured soldier, so he spends several days in the hospital recovering.

In the same battle, Florence and Palmer’s husband, Okaya, is killed, leaving Florence and dozens of other women as widows. They receive Kony’s permission to choose new husbands. Through it all, Florence works as a nurse in the hospital, tending to the hundreds of wounded streaming in from Jebel Lem.

Once Anthony recovers from his injury, he meets Florence near the hospital. He falls in love with her, insisting that she makes him feel happy in a way that he hasn’t since being abducted years ago. He goes to see Florence several days in a row until she agrees to marry him. Anthony, Florence, and dozens of other widows marry in the same wedding celebration.

As Anthony and Florence begin their life together, they share their true feelings about the LRA, resolving to escape and, once free, have a real marriage and spend their lives together. Shortly thereafter, Florence gives birth to a boy, Kenneth.

Meanwhile, Anthony can see that Kony’s army is beginning to falter. They lose vital support from the Arab nations, who were funding the LRA to take over the Sudan. As a result, the Sudanese and Ugandan armies begin working together, ruthlessly hunting Kony as he travels back and forth between Uganda and the Sudan in hiding.

For several months, Florence sees Anthony only a few times. She spends most of her time working in the hospital. Just after Kenneth turns two, she realizes that she’s pregnant again. Anthony promises to help her find a way to escape so that their children won’t grow up in the LRA.

A few months later, Anthony and Florence are in separate battalions, both making their way back to Kony. As Sudanese fighters attack Florence’s group, she goes into labor, giving birth against a tree. A few weeks later, her battalion meets up with Anthony’s, and they reunite as he renews his promise to help her escape.

After Kony establishes a new base, Florence stays behind to build a new home while Anthony goes south to fight. One day, Patrick approaches her: He has a plan to help her escape. They flee the next morning, but manhunters immediately pursue them. With Patrick’s help, Florence escapes with her children, going to the nearest village and police station.

To keep Florence’s escape secret, Patrick returns to the base and tells them that he tried to stop Florence along with several manhunters, but Sudanese attackers killed all of them (including Florence and her children). For several weeks, Anthony believes that his family died and becomes further disenchanted with Kony and the LRA. However, Patrick eventually tells him the truth, reigniting Anthony’s will to escape and be with her.

After months of fighting and fleeing across the Sudan, Anthony returns to Uganda. While Kony goes into hiding, Anthony takes his chance. He requests permission to go into a nearby village to raid and then fakes illness to be left alone and runs into the forest, but Bacia (the LRA’s tracker) and several other soldiers follow him.

Anthony runs for more than two days. Finally, exhausted, he falls asleep against a tree. When he wakes up, he sees Bacia standing over him with a gun. Before Bacia can kill him, however, a leopardess trying to protect her cubs attacks and kills Bacia. The leopardess leaves Anthony alone, and he continues his escape.

Navigating by the stars, Anthony finds his village. Ugandan soldiers capture him and interrogate him about his time in the LRA. Facing years in prison, Anthony contemplates fleeing or death by suicide. However, he decides to take his punishment and is allowed to serve in the Ugandan Army to atone.

Reunited, Anthony and Florence make plans to marry while recovering from their time in the LRA. Florence frequently attends therapy, learning to release her anger toward Kony through forgiveness. Anthony decodes LRA messages for the Ugandan Army while regularly pleading on the radio for other soldiers to abandon the LRA.

Anthony and Florence marry in front of their friends and family. They spend several days celebrating their marriage, finding true happiness for the first time in more than a decade.