CLS Book Club // “A Flower Traveled in My Blood”

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Charleston Library Society

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CLS Book Club // “A Flower Traveled in My Blood”

March 18 @ 11:30 am - 12:30 pm

FREE

CLS Book Club is FREE, in-person, and open to the public—and also member-researched and led through thoughtfully curated discussion. Whether you’ve finished the book, are thinking about starting it, or couldn’t make it past the halfway point, please join us.

RSVP is required via the form below so that we can plan for seating.

About Book Club

Offered a few times a year, the CLS Book Club seeks to explore various topics, authors, and diversity within its book selections. Under this objective, Book Club also offers space for conversation, perspectives, and discourse on the deeply moving and true story of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina. A Flower Traveled in My Blood by Haley Cohen Gilliland brings to light the civil discourse of 1970s Argentina, and the lengths to which these women went in order to bring their families home. CLS Book Club’s Mike Gottlieb will host the discussion on this powerful nonfiction narrative.

A Flower Traveled in My Blood is the rarest of nonfiction that reads like a novel and puts your heart in your throat. It is the product of years of extensive archival research and meticulous, original reporting. It marks the arrival of a blazing new talent in narrative journalism. In these pages, a regime tries to terrorize a country, but love prevails. The grandmothers’ stunning stories reveal new truths about memory, identity, and family.

About the Book

In the early hours of March 24, 1976, the streets of Buenos Aires rumble with tanks as soldiers seize the presidential palace and topple Argentina’s leader. The country is now under the control of a military junta, with army chief Jorge Rafael Videla at the helm. With quiet support from the United States and tacit approval from much of Argentina’s people, who are tired of constant bombings and gunfights, the junta swiftly launches the National Reorganization Process or El Proceso—a bland name masking their ruthless campaign to crush the political left and instill the country with “Western, Christian” values. The junta holds power until 1983 and decimates a generation. One of the military’s most diabolical acts is kidnapping hundreds of pregnant women. After giving birth in captivity, the women are “disappeared,” and their babies secretly given to other families—many of them headed by police or military officers. For mothers of pregnant daughters and daughters-in-law, the source of their grief is twofold—the disappearances of their children, and the theft of their grandchildren. A group of fierce grandmothers forms the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, dedicated to finding the stolen infants and seeking justice from a nation that betrayed them. At a time when speaking out could mean death, the Abuelas confront military officers and launch protests to reach international diplomats and journalists. They become detectives, adopting disguises to observe suspected grandchildren, and even work alongside a renowned American scientist to pioneer groundbreaking genetic tests.

For a copy of the book, check out our catalog, or shop local at Buxton Books.