[An] astonishing story . . . Powerful . . . Harrowing . . . Absorbing and lucid . . . You would have to harden your heart to be unmoved by the Abuelas’ quest.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
“Immaculately researched and endlessly readable, this unforgettable debut is a testament to ruthless and unchecked far-right military control and the power of collective strength, courage, and protest to overcome it.” —Ms. Magazine
“A Flower Traveled in My Blood is an unflinching playbook of what happens when a government’s tyrannical impulses are fed as well as a heartbreaking, immersive account of what it means to stand up against injustice and demand that those who allow it move out of the way.” —Booklist (starred review)
“[Gilliland] conveys the complicated, heart-wrenching fullness of her characters’ individual stories and shades their backdrop with compulsively readable history of geopolitical tension and the emerging DNA science that fueled the Abuelas’ fight. Gilliland’s work, exhaustively and compassionately researched, offers a crucial counterbalance to the dark legacy of Argentina’s desaparecidos, injecting the light of a model resistance movement that lay the groundwork for future international human rights investigations. Her humility and respect for the fraught journeys her subjects made toward each other and for the vital questions their journeys raised—about power, identity, family, and collective memory and healing—ensure the text will resonate for generations the world over. A piercing, emotional tribute to the value of persistent resistance.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Enthralling . . . Written with the nail-biting verve of a thriller, this spotlights relentless perseverance in the face of unthinkable brutality.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Among the thousands of people ‘disappeared’ by Argentina’s military dictatorship in the late 1970s and early ’80s were hundreds of pregnant women who were killed as soon as they gave birth, their babies distributed to military officials. In this gutting history, Gilliland, a former Argentina correspondent for The Economist, retraces the lives of these women and their offspring through the stories of the determined Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo whose demand for information, and for their grandchildren, was unflagging.” —The New York Times, “20 Books Coming in July”
“Journalist Haley Cohen Gilliland immortalizes the heroic resistance of the women who called themselves the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. . . . A Flower Traveled in My Blood meticulously chronicles a chapter of humankind at its worst, giving these times their gruesome due, lest they be forgotten and repeated.” —BookPage (starred review)
“Haley Cohen Gilliland has written an extraordinary book. A compelling family saga and a forensic detective story set against a sweeping narrative of a hundred years of Argentine history, A Flower Traveled in My Blood is also a harrowing and timely reminder of what happens when democracy succumbs to despotism.” —Adam Higginbotham, New York Times bestselling author of Challenger and Midnight in Chernobyl
“A Flower Traveled in My Blood is a triumphant saga of ordinary people doing extraordinary things in the face of pure malevolence. Haley Cohen Gilliland’s inspiring, engrossing tale reminds us that successful resistance to authoritarian oppression often comes from society’s seemingly least powerful—in this case, from a network of heartsick grandmothers armed with the superpowers of patience, persistence, and bottomless reservoirs of love.” —Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of The Wide Wide Sea
“In this beautifully crafted narrative history, Haley Cohen Gilliland brings to light the stories of Argentinian grandmothers who used every method available, including nascent DNA testing, to locate the children and grandchildren ‘disappeared’ or even murdered during the dictatorship of the country’s military junta. The range of emotions is breathtaking; we learn of the horrors of disappearing, the grunt work of activism, the joys of reunion, and the pain and confusion felt by the disappeared as they try to reconcile their old and new identities. A Flower Traveled in My Blood is the riveting story of a dark history that we must not forget.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University
“Haley Cohen Gilliland’s monumental account of the stolen children of Argentina is a heartbreaking and humane story of devotion and moral courage, personal and cultural trauma, unfathomable political corruption and accountability, and the complexities of personal identity in the genetic age. The Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo now have a history fitting of their astonishing rigor and inspiring grace.” —Robert Kolker, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road
“History is filled with tragedy and heartbreak, redemption and hope, but nothing compares to the story of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. These women lost their children to a brutal dictatorship, and in the same cruel act, their grandchildren were taken. Their relentless search for them led the Abuelas to defy murderous squads, a complicit society, and political and judicial barriers. Yet, they kept going, creating profound changes in international law and science along the way, while providing new answers to essential moral questions about memory and identity. Haley Cohen Gilliland found the perfect thread to tell this complex, extraordinary story, and she’s done so masterfully and with great heart. And every bit of it is true.” —Graciela Mochkofsky, author of The Prophet of the Andes
“One devastating outcome of the 1976 military coup in Argentina was the new junta’s systematic kidnapping of hundreds of pregnant women, their children stolen and given to political allies. A powerful force of resistance came from the grandmothers whose story is thrillingly recounted here.” —Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe, “Books to Add to Your Summer Reading List”
“Gilliland’s sweeping, rigorous narrative history tells the story of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, the fearless Argentine grandmothers . . . who have much to teach us now.” —The Millions
“A Flower Traveled in My Blood is a poignant testament to the power of love as a form of resistance. This expertly reported tale from the former Argentina correspondent for The Economist, Haley Cohen Gilliland, honors the families who were torn apart by dictatorship and sheds light on the lengths to which people will go for the sake of their loved ones.” —Paste magazine, “The Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books and Memoirs of 2025”
★ 2025-05-03
When women banded together to reunite families.
In the last half of the 20th century, Argentina twitched chaotically, violently, between the working-class orientation of Eva and Juan Perón and the reactionary moral rigidity of Juan Carlos Onganía before a coup by Jorge Rafael Videla in 1976 forever reset the country’s history. Under Videla’s direction, a violent military junta kidnapped, tortured, and murdered thousands of Argentines (by some estimates as many as 30,000 who were deemed “subversives”). Centering the saga of the Roisinblits and their matriarch Rosa, journalist Gilliland, in her first book, approaches this brutal period through the eyes of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, a scrappy, courageous group of mothers of desaparecidos who had infants or were pregnant when they were disappeared. Over decades of instability that followed the junta’s rule, the Abuelas were at the forefront of calls for accountability and justice, anchoring their grief in the search for grandchildren who had been born in detention centers and adopted—appropriated—by new families, often with connections to Videla’s government. The author conveys the complicated, heart-wrenching fullness of her characters’ individual stories and shades their backdrop with compulsively readable history of geopolitical tension and the emerging DNA science that fueled the Abuelas’ fight. Gilliland’s work, exhaustively and compassionately researched, offers a crucial counterbalance to the dark legacy of Argentina’s desaparecidos, injecting the light of a model resistance movement that lay the groundwork for future international human rights investigations. Her humility and respect for the fraught journeys her subjects made toward each other and for the vital questions their journeys raised—about power, identity, family, and collective memory and healing—ensure the text will resonate for generations the world over.
A piercing, emotional tribute to the value of persistent resistance.
