In 'When the Stars Go Dark,' Paula McLain transports readers to the dusky edges of human understanding through the piercing eyes of Anna Hart, a San Francisco detective specializing in missing persons. Besieged by personal tragedy, Anna retreats to Mendocino, the Northern California village of her youth, seeking solace and coherence. However, no sooner does she arrive than she's engulfed by the case of a vanished local teenager, a haunting echo of a childhood trauma. McLain intertwines actual missing persons cases with a keen exploration of trauma, threading a narrative of fate and redemption that asks what it means to reclaim life and belief when all seems lost. Anna's journey is as much inward as it is a relentless hunt for the missing—a path laden with the realization that to save others, she must first navigate her own haunted past.