A Flower Traveled in My Blood is the masterful account of the Abuelas of Plaza de Mayo: women in Argentina whose children were “disappeared” by the brutal dictatorship in the mid-1970s, and whose grandchildren were stolen. The story is remarkable in many ways – not just for the tenacity of the grandmothers, who refused to give up on their missing families, but also for the way in which their struggle helped further international law and science, most notably in DNA identification. Blending painstaking research with a nuanced exploration of family ties, identity, and memory, A Flower Traveled in My Blood is heartbreaking, complex, and utterly enthralling.
A Flower Traveled in My Blood by Haley Cohen Gilliland, (List Price: $30, Gilliland, Haley Cohen, 9781668017142, July 2025)
Reviewed by Jude Burke-Lewis, Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi