This gem of historical fiction centers around a short-lived secret anarchist society, a young man eager to resist brutal authoritarianism, and an era echoing with calls for liberty and freedom.

The failure of multiple armed uprisings against Japanese colonial authorities led Taiwanese intellectuals in the 1920s to advocate for a non-violent, public activism path to achieving local autonomy. Contemporary literature, art, and literary clubs and speech events became platforms touting democratic ideas and ideals and, in some cases, anarchist principles. The story in this book draws inspiration from the youth of this period.

Receiving a long-lost sketchbook of his in the mail in 1989 opens for Huang Che-pin a floodgate of memories that sweep him back to 1925 and to Ozawa – a Taiwan-born Japanese friend he had met during his college years in Taihoku (Taipei). As a veterinary student in Japan, Ozawa had joined an underground anarchist group and, upon returning to the island, became friends through a speech event with a circle of likeminded friends, including Che-pin – at the time a fervent, budding young artist.

The secret anarchist society Black Youth Alliance Ozawa founded with two friends in Taiwan in 1926 began distributing pamphlets and recruiting new members, of which Che-pin was one of the first. Ozawa’s two friends headed, respectively, to central and southern Taiwan to further grow the Black Youth Alliance’s ranks.

Catching wind of this seditious movement, colonial police threw an island-wide dragnet that ended up mostly arresting people with no connection to the Alliance. Che-pin, detained for his speech event participation, was soon released because his sketchbook and its incriminating cache of Alliance pamphlets had fortuitously gone missing. Nonetheless, the police crackdown succeeded in snuffing the Alliance’s flame before it had a chance to shine.

The simple, easy flowing narrative wraps readers into 1920s Taiwan; a time when youth were testing the limits of freedom in Japan’s tightly controlled colony and a few dreamed dreams of an anarchist future. Like shooting stars, they rose from the darkness and, loathed to hang bright in the sky, fell to earth as steeled, jet-black stones that would survive to inspire like-minded, freedom-seeking people for generations to come.