“All the Glimmering Stars” is an extraordinary story of love and survival

Note: Text has been edited and does not match audio exactly.

Tricia Ford: Hi, listeners. I'm Tricia Ford, an editor here at Audible, and today I'm thrilled to speak with Mark Sullivan on the release of his latest work of historical fiction, All the Glimmering Stars. Welcome, Mark. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Mark Sullivan: Well, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Tricia.

TF: Now, fans of Beneath a Scarlet Sky and The Last Green Valley have been eagerly awaiting your next novel, and All the Glimmering Stars is a return to historical fiction, but it takes place in a very different time and place. It's a story based on the real-life experiences of Anthony Opoka and Florence Okori, two Ugandan teens who were kidnapped and turned into underage warriors for a messianic warlord in the 1990s. Now, Mark, my first question is, what led you to this story?

MS: Well, my oldest son, Connor, who's also a novelist, called me up in the spring of 2019, and he said, "Dad, I heard a story last night that I think is your next book. It's a story of humanity, and it meets all your criteria. I think you should hear it." And so about two months later, the head guy who'd been the squadron commander of SEAL Team 6 and another guy who had been the CIA station chief in Kampala, Uganda, came to my home in Bozeman and they gave me an overview of the story. And I knew before they even finished that I was going to write the book, because it was hitting all this criteria that I have, which is, I look for stories that are inherently moving, inspiring, potentially healing to some people, and potentially transforming to some readers. So, this story hit all those criteria right off the bat.

TF: I totally agree, and because this is real-life historical fiction, based on real life, can you give us a short account of who Joseph Kony is, and what his cult-like regime was like?

MS: So, Joseph Kony is a disaffected guy who followed his cousin, who had been kind of a mystical preacher, and when she fled into Kenya, he took over and began to fight [Ugandan President Yoweri] Museveni, who had won the civil war in Uganda. And he gathered former members of the rebel forces that were fighting the government, and as well as other people, and he began to preach in a place called Awari in Uganda. And he went up on a hill, and people said he was able to call in thunderstorms, and people began to follow him, but then he did something brutal. He decided that he wasn't going to be able to recruit enough soldiers to overthrow the government, and he was going to start kidnapping children and molding them into soldiers. And that's where we are when Anthony and Florence are kidnapped.

TF: Wow. And what is the timeframe?

MS: This was 1994 when he was kidnapped. Kony's been around for six or seven years by this point, but he's been getting bolder and bolder, and people know that he's kidnapping children. Anthony is taken right during the peak of when he was grabbing kids. And as many as 35,000. A hard number's unclear, but that's a conservative estimate: 35,000 children were taken and turned into soldiers.

TF: Wow. Now, I did read that you yourself spent some time in West Africa after college. Did that influence you at all?

MS: Yeah, definitely. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, West Africa, a place called Agadez, which is actually a very dangerous place now. What the Peace Corps taught me was the ability to adapt to cultures very quickly. That was one of the skills they gave you, was called cross-cultural training. And I've used it constantly in my career. It allows me to read about cultures, identify things about it that interest me and that I want to research when I'm on the ground. So, I read about Acholi culture, which both Anthony and Florence came from an Acholi tribe. They speak Acholi, which is one of the languages of Northern Uganda. And I was able to understand enough about just the Ugandan way of life before I even got there, and all of it was confirmed by what I saw. So, it's just another way of looking at the world that I find very helpful.

TF: Now, with your research, what else did you do in preparation? Because the book is so detailed.

MS: Well, I read everything I could, first about the LRA, the Lord's Resistance Army, so I had a pretty strong understanding of what had happened. But what I noticed was, with one exception, there was nothing really written fully about Kony. It was always secondhand or thirdhand, and there was no one who actually witnessed a lot of stuff that was being cited in the books. Rather, it was about the hunt for him, right? And I said, "Well, I have a unique opportunity here," because, of course, Anthony became Kony's personal radioman, and he was under orders to stay within 15 meters of Kony at all times. So, he was like the ultimate witness. A lot of the detail came from him, and he has a very, very, very strong memory. I think because he had to operate the radios as well as code all of Kony's orders to his troops in far-flung areas, he had a tremendous memory of when things happened, where they happened, and that was part of the detail process.

"What historical fiction does is give me the ability to bring it to life so that the reader has the experience of riding on Anthony's shoulder or Florence's shoulder while they experience, and that's what I'm trying to do, and it's more powerful."

Then we started going to various places, like Awari Hill where Kony first preached, and we climbed it, and it's this bald granite top with almost a naturally shallow amphitheater on top. You can see for a long ways, and it looks to the west and northwest, and the day we were up there, we could see thunderstorms in the area, so you could see how this guy would be able to do this. We talked to his cousins. We talked to his preacher. We had a lot of time on the ground in various settings in the book, except for in South Sudan. At the time, there was civil unrest going on there, and even though I was there with a former squadron commander of SEAL Team 6 and a former spy, we decided we weren't going in because there was a lot of unrest.

But Anthony was so precise in his memory of where things took place, for example, because what we really wanted to do was go to the Imatong Mountains where there's a lot of the book that takes place in the Imatongs. But Anthony was so remarkably accurate on where things happened that I was able to go in on Google Earth, for example, and explore all these places and see them, even though I hadn't been to them personally. I've been close, within about 60 kilometers, and I'd seen them in the distance, but I hadn't been in them.

TF: How much time did you spend with Anthony and Florence?

MS: Well, the original plan was to spend three weeks, but we got over there and the Delta variant was starting to go. We had been delayed by a year going to Uganda anyway. We were supposed to be there in June of 2020. We went in June of '21. We were a full two weeks into it when we found out through the grapevine that Uganda was likely to close for six weeks, and if we didn't leave, we were going to get trapped. And we ended up on the last flight out, and it was closed the next day for six weeks.

TF: Wow. That's crazy. Now, with all the research and the investigation, I know that you worked as an investigative journalist before your fiction-writing career. How does that factor into how you approach a topic? And how does creating a work of historical fiction versus writing a nonfictional account of something add to the story?

MS: So, one of the things that I like to do, and I've been blessed with all three of these historical fiction novels, is that I was able to interview people who it directly happened to in all three cases. Pino Lella [from Beneath a Scarlet Sky], the Martel boys [from The Last Green Valley], and Florence and Anthony, as well as I interviewed close to 50 people in Uganda. We were able to watch things, like we saw an incredible thing that they use to rehabilitate child soldiers where they put on a play. Silent. No noise. No talk. And they basically re-create how they were kidnapped, what their experience was, how they escaped, how they were brought back into society. By going there and talking one-on-one with Florence and Anthony, I was able to get a lot of that.

So, why fiction versus nonfiction? I believe that it's very rare for nonfiction to come alive on the page. There's a reportive quality. “This person said, that person said”—and there has to be a lot of supporting documentation to write such a thing. I didn't have a lot of supporting documentation, other than Anthony's testimony at the war crimes trial at The Hague. I did have that, and I read it, and of course I had long, long interviews with both of them. What historical fiction does is give me the ability to bring it to life so that the reader has the experience of riding on Anthony's shoulder or Florence's shoulder while they experience, and that's what I'm trying to do, and it's more powerful.

Plus, you know, as soon as you start futzing around with stuff, you've made it fiction. Just by deciding to delete certain things, you've made it fiction. I'll give you an example. So, there were characters, multiple characters in the research who all had the same name. Literally, the same name, and it was very confusing. I couldn't even keep track of it, so I made a decision to make a composite character with that name who represented all four of the people. All four of their experiences end up in the story, but it happens to one fictional person. Another example, when children tried to run from the LRA, they sent teams of trackers after them, and they were remarkably good and they were remarkably ruthless. For the story to work, and for the reader to experience the same kind of paralyzing terror that Florence and Anthony experienced when they escaped, I had to condense those teams into one team, led by the most ruthless tracker, and that's why you experience that. There were multiple trackers. That guy was a real tracker. He was after Anthony at one point, but he wasn't the guy who chased him at the end, so that kind of thing allowed me to get at a deeper truth, which was when you escaped, they sent killers after you.

TF: That makes sense, and I agree. It makes it more come alive, and with fiction, I think listeners or readers just become more naturally a part of the story. And you're right about as soon as you change the slightest thing, it's technically fiction. It doesn't make it less true. It makes it more true in many ways.

MS: Yes.

TF: Now, one thing kind of specific to audio, your narrator, Junior Nyong'o, was a new-to-me narrator, hasn't done a lot, but he's so perfectly cast here. He's an actor, musician, and a DJ from Nairobi, Kenya, and he has a famous sister, Lupita. How did you discover him?

MS: The editors at APub [Amazon Publishing] brought him to me, and there were two or three that I listened to, but as soon as he started reading, I was like, "It's him," because he was hitting the cadence of the way people speak there. The pronunciations were dead-on. He understood where to inflect stuff when I was emphasizing things. I thought he was just brilliant right from the get-go. And the SEAL team commander and the spy, they listened too, and they had lived, both of them had lived in East Africa, and they said, "It's him.” He does a wonderful job.

TF: He really does. And his performance being so beautiful and so spot-on kind of brings me back to Anthony and Florence. They're remarkable people. And I wanted to ask you, since you know them and you know so much about them, what was your favorite moment with Anthony and with Florence, individually and as a couple?

MS: I think the thing you first notice, Anthony, he's very shy at first. And then he starts revealing his humor, and he's very funny and he loves to laugh, and he's very committed to ending child soldiering. And that honesty comes through, that authenticity comes through all the time. My favorite memory of him is when he slaughtered a goat and cooked a goat for us out in his home village, and that was a big highlight.

Florence is one of the most impressive people I've ever met in my life. Her nickname, for those of you who haven't read the book yet, her nickname that she adopts, her war name, is Betty. And the SEAL team commander, when he left the SEAL teams and moved back to Montana, he bought a truck and he named it Betty after the toughest woman on Earth.

My favorite moments with her were when she finally opened up and she was willing to talk about giving birth in the Nile River bottom during a firefight. And I was just in awe, you know, absolute awe listening to her. She also had a wicked sense of humor. I was speaking to her—she was speaking in Acholi, and we had an interpreter who was also an expert in child soldiers and how to rehabilitate them, and Florence trusted her implicitly. She'd known her for a long time, but when she started describing it, the details of what had happened, and how she had to hold one son between her legs with this float thing she had basically invented on the spot. She's having contractions, and she's dragging herself sideways across the flooded, raging Nile, and I was like, "Oh, my god. I'd want to write the story just for this," you know? And it was very emotional when I wrote that sequence, trying to stay with the thought pattern and motions that she told me she went through.

And them together, I think my favorite moment was when Florence describes them meeting for the first time at this watering well, and he talked to her briefly and then he just walks off, and she couldn't believe it. And she was angry still, you know. It was funny, I mean hearing this story almost 25 years after it happened, and she was very upset that he walked away from her. And so they give each other a lot of ribbing about that, because he says, "Well, you walked away from me," and, you know, it was, "You deserved it," and it was all done in jest and good humor, and I think that was their moment together that I really loved.

TF: That's great. And I do like focusing on them and that love. I know one quote I read from you was, I think you were asked if you were to put the story into three words, I believe you said it was, "Love conquers darkness."

MS: That's right.

TF: Which is beautiful, because it is such a dark, dark story that's truly evil, with these people and what these kids suffered. But at heart, I think it's also very much a love story, and just how much this couple has accomplished to survive. The fact that they're alive is a miracle, and then the good works they've been doing ever since is another miracle. So, would you describe this as, like I said, mostly a love story, or what should people take away the most?

MS: I think it is a love story, but it's a love story within a story of humanity. I believe that there are certain stories that are universal. I look for them. Those are the ones I'm interested in telling, and as soon as I heard this story, it was about as universal a story as it gets. People taken into bondage who break free. Those are the stories that last. Because they are common stories, and they're the stories that we need to hear. When I heard their story and I recognized the triumph of it, I said, "I can't lose track of either their humanity or their love, and how they were raised."

"When I heard their story and I recognized the triumph of it, I said, 'I can't lose track of either their humanity or their love, and how they were raised.'"

They were both raised in separate villages. He and his family in his village, there was a great value placed on becoming a good human, and treating other people well and understanding basic right from wrong, and there was a real loving framework around him, right? This is important. And same thing with Florence, to the point where her mother repeatedly in her childhood tells her there is no force in the universe stronger than the power of love. She holds that when she's captured. He holds to what it is to be a good human when he's captured. Even though they're almost brainwashed, they managed to hold onto it, and when they fall in love, the power of love allows them to resurrect that part of their lives, to once again become these fundamentally good people. One of the early readers said it's fundamentally this tender story, rare story, of two really good people struggling for light in unimaginable darkness.

TF: It is an inspiration. They're real people, and they're very likable as real people, but as a reader, you want to root for people, and these are exactly the people you want to root for. So, I think everyone listening and reading, it's not an easy read, but it's compelling. It's propulsive. You want to keep going because you're so invested. They're such good people that you care about them and you just want to see it through.

MS: True.

TF: When you were writing All the Glimmering Stars, did you have an audience in mind?

MS: The same audience that read Beneath a Scarlet Sky and The Last Green Valley, and for the same reasons. All three of them are stories of great humanity and the triumph of the human spirit, all three of them. So, I expect it's the same, but if you've never read me before, I think you would read it to be transported into a place that you couldn't imagine on the backs of two of the more amazing people I've encountered in my life.

TF: Amazing. Another treat in the book is an afterword written by Anthony and Florence. That is an added treat, at the end of this beautifully constructed fictional retelling of real-life events, to have just a little note from them. And it's at the very end, so you have to listen through and hear that. Now, I have to ask for the future, what is your next big historical fiction? Do you have anything in the works?

MS: I have a story that I love. It takes place in Vietnam, and I'm having trouble getting the person that it happened to to agree to let me do it. I'm really trying to get him to let me do it, because it, again, it's another one of these stories. It's not quite as triumphant as the other ones, but it's another one of these stories that's just jaw-dropping, you know, that these things happen to people. This was in the 1960s, and it's a story of two guys in the Navy who get sent to Vietnam, and why they were sent there and what they do is stuff of legends, and I want it.

TF: Well, good luck.

MS: Thank you.

TF: And finally, is there anything else you'd like to share about All the Glimmering Stars with listeners?

MS: I don't write issue books, you know? I don't. If an issue comes up in the course of the book, by all means, I'm going to explore it, and I didn't really understand anything about the plight and the danger, the threat of child soldiering until I started this work on this book. And it is such a big issue that the UN general secretary has a special envoy for children in armed conflict. And why are they so concerned? This is a big deal that there'd be an envoy from the office to study specifically this issue. And it's because numerous studies have found out that children who are traumatized in war often become radical terrorists. Either if they were a child soldier or they were molested or hurt or injured or tortured by someone in a combat setting and they're not rehabilitated and given the right treatment, they probably will become some form of radical terrorist.

And I was blown away when I learned that. And they issue a report every year. You can look them up online, in which they name where children are being kidnapped and used as slaves or child soldiers, or there's attacks on children specifically, intentionally. And it happens all over the world, every day, and there's no doubt that we are creating a ticking time bomb by putting guns in the hands of underage kids.

TF: And like you've pointed out by teaching us about Anthony and Florence, is that there are good people in the world doing good work to try and end this.

MS: Yeah, it's an issue that gets overlooked. There's all sorts of reasons for it. First of all, if they're very young, they don't look like soldiers. They're often not dressed as soldiers. They're just in a combat situation. They may be under arms, or they may have been kidnapped and dragged in there. You just don't know. But this entire issue of children in armed conflict is one that was raised very high by this book, and you know, when it was first proposed to me that I work on this story, it was because Mick and Olly [The SEAL team commander and the spy] believed that if told correctly, it could end the practice of child soldiering. I listened to it, and I went, "Well, that would be cool too, but this is the best story I've ever heard that's untold, and I intend to tell it.”

TF: Amazing, and it can do just that. That speaks to the power of fiction as well, because by bringing the story to life as only fiction can, it will hopefully reach more and more people.

MS: That would be wonderful.

TF: Yeah, that would be wonderful. Thank you so much for your time today, Mark, and congratulations on this profoundly beautiful audiobook, All the Glimmering Stars, which is available now on Audible.

MS: Thank you, Tricia. I really appreciate it.