A propulsive new novel from bestselling author Paula McLain
A missing girl.A broken woman.The truth is hard to see . . .
When the Stars Go Dark.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife comes an atmospheric novel of intertwined destinies and heart-wrenching suspense: A detective hiding away from the world. A series of disappearances that reach into her past. Can solving them help her heal?
Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the darkest side of human nature. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns that a local teenage girl has gone missing. READ MORE »
BEHIND THE BOOK
Watch Paula McLain discuss her inspiration for When the Stars Go Dark. A NOTE FROM PAULA McLAIN
Dear Reader,Ten years ago, when inspiration struck in the form of a real woman from history—Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley—the idea seemed to come from nowhere. Something eerily similar happened in the writing of When the Stars Go Dark—the idea for which came just as unexpectedly and mysteriously, and with an electrical inner “yes” that I’ve learned to pay attention to.I pictured a missing persons expert obsessed with trying to save a missing girl and also struggling to make peace with her past. Almost immediately I knew the story had to be set in Mendocino and that the time frame of the narrative had to be before the internet had exploded.Choosing 1993 was instinctual—random—and yet when I dug into the research, I was startled to learn that a rash of real-life abductions of young girls and had occurred in the same geographical area and time frame I was exploring, most notably the kidnapping of twelve-year-old Polly Klaas.I confess I didn’t sleep well in the weeks and month I researched Polly’s case and others. It began to feel imperative that I tell their stories as bluntly and factually as possible, as a way to honor their lives and dignify their deaths and disappearances. Saying their names became for me a sacred act. A kind of prayer.It wasn’t until late in the stages of drafting that it fully dawned on me just why I was so drawn to tell this particular story and not any other. My troubled detective Anna Hart is obsessed with trauma and healing, with intimate violence and the complex hidden connection between victims and predators because I’m obsessed with those things, and long have been. I’ve given her other parts of me too—a version of my childhood spent in foster care, and my abiding love of the natural world as deep medicine.
What Anna knows and thinks about the hidden scars of sexual abuse, I know as a sexual abuse survivor. Sometimes I look up and down the street as I’m walking and wonder which of the girls and women walking the other way share my story. I believe that our sorrow connects us, yes, and that it can also be the source of our power as well as our empathy. Anna Hart’s pain has led her to her path, her destiny, and mine has led me precisely here. To these characters, real and imaginary, to the fern forest, dripping with fog, to the bluffs above the roaring Pacific, to the cabin in the deep dark woods, and into the very heart of this book—which is as personal as anything I’ve ever written.Happy reading,Paula McLainP.S. I spoke to the New York Times about my very personal inspiration for the novel. Read it here.
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NYT Bestseller
NYT Bestseller
NYT Bestseller
PRAISE FOR WHEN THE STARS GO DARK 
“A powerhouse of a novel that is guaranteed to keep the reader up all night.”—Kristin Hannah, author of The Four Winds“
The twisty plot keeps the pages flying, and Paula McLain’s lyrical and poetic prose reveals insight after insight about the human heart, making this riveting read not only an engrossing psychological thriller, but crime fiction of the highest order.”—Lisa Scottoline, author of Someone Knows“
Paula McLain has created a vulnerable, intelligent, unforgettable protagonist whose interior life is as interesting as the mysteries she has to solve. When the Stars Go Dark is my favorite kind of book. I’ll recommend it far and wide.”—Liz Moore, author of Long Bright River
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