All the Stars in the Heavens

Based on the life of legendary American actress Loretta Young, American author Adriana Trigiani’s novel All the Stars in the Heavens (2015) follows (fictional) convent girl Alda Ducci as she becomes Young’s private secretary. The two women negotiate the temptations of fame and the strictures governing women’s lifestyles in the 1930s. A New York Times bestseller, All the Stars in the Heavens is Trigiani’s 14th novel: “Eminently readable and richly imagined, Trigiani’s latest will thrill her fans and surely collect new ones” (Publishers’ Weekly).

We first meet Italian-born Alda Ducci at St. Elizabeth’s Infant Hospital, where unmarried mothers from Catholic families are brought to bear their children in secret: at birth, the children are whisked away for adoption. The process is overseen by nuns, and Alda is a novice, soon to take her vows and become a full member of the order.

However, when one particularly distressed young mother pleads with Alda to be allowed to keep her baby, Alda takes her request to the Mother Superior. It’s too much for the Mother Superior, who has come to suspect that Alda cannot put her faith above her feelings. Alda is dismissed from the order and sent, instead, to become the private secretary to Loretta Young, a Hollywood starlet and a devout Catholic.



Loretta welcomes Alda, taking her into the family home, which she shares with her three sisters and the family matriarch, Gladys, a savvy businesswoman who helps run Loretta’s career as well as her own interior design company.

Loretta is hardworking and charismatic, but dyslexic and somewhat disorganized. In a matter of days, Alda has become indispensable to the actress, and the two women begin to grow closer.

However, Alda struggles with the shift from the voluntary poverty of a novice nun to the willful luxury of Hollywood. She tries her best to find a spiritual mission in her glamorous surroundings.



She is increasingly swept up in Loretta’s life. Abandoned by her father, Loretta became a star when she was still a child. Now—despite her Catholicism—she has a reputation for falling in love with her leading men, a reputation that is not lost on their wives.

Alda is introduced to a dazzling cast of Hollywood players, from dashing actors to naïve ingénues, bullying producers and frustrated directors. Many real-life figures appear, including the mischievously witty English actor David Niven, a close friend of Loretta’s.

Alda must help Loretta to negotiate the complexities of the studio system and the Hays Code (which imposed severe limits on on-screen romance). Loretta works hard—translating her lines into a homemade code that she finds easier to read—but she simply can’t help falling for her handsome leading men. When she is cast opposite Spencer Tracy, she must draw on her Catholic faith and Alda’s moral support to resist temptation: he is a married man. They fall in love, but Loretta resists the urge to undermine his marriage.



No sooner has Loretta succeeded in this effort than she finds herself cast opposite the even more legendary and handsome Clark Gable, also a married man and ten years her senior. The film is Call of the Wild, so Loretta and Alda must leave Hollywood and the family behind to head out on location. Loretta is determined not to fall in love with Gable, but he persistently pursues her. Meanwhile, Alda meets and falls in love with Luca. a scene-painter.

After a whirlwind romance, Alda and Luca marry in Seattle. Loretta and Gable fly out to be there, and that night she succumbs to his advances.

Gable and Loretta’s brief affair results in a pregnancy. Loretta and Alda know that if the story gets out, Loretta’s career will be over: pregnancy is bad enough, even if the father weren’t married to another woman. Gable’s career would be at risk too. He promises to divorce his wife to be with Loretta, but this also risks both their careers. However, believing that abortion is a mortal sin, the women don’t even consider it.



Instead, Loretta, Alda, and Gladys devise a plan, drawing on Alda’s experience at St. Elizabeth’s. When Loretta’s pregnancy starts to show, they go on “vacation” to England. Weeks before she is due, Loretta returns to Hollywood, where she gives an interview from her bed, explaining that her absence from showbusiness is due to a long-standing medical condition. Then she gives birth to her daughter, Judith. The girl is placed in an orphanage, where she stays for over a year until Loretta “adopts” her.

Praised by critics for creating a “plausible day-to-day look into the actress’s life” (Publishers’ Weekly), All the Stars in the Heavens explores the tensions between ambition and faith, and love and social restrictions, in the lives of 1930s women.