When the Stars Go Dark

Anna begins the novel emotionally devastated: “I’m here [in Mendocino] trying to remember how to live through unthinkable moments” […] “how to ride out the wildness and the chaos and the fear” (33). She is alone in her despair: “Is this living? Reckoning with my guilt every day?” (351). In helping rescue Cameron, Anna also rescues herself. Anna is so wounded that she cannot bring herself to share the story of the death of her daughter with anyone in Mendocino. She finally opens up to Tally, the psychic so critical in the search for Cameron, who tells her, yes, “grief is a powerful force” (352) but that the accident was not her fault and that her daughter watches over her. Now, Tally tells Anna, “your family needs you” (350).

Murder mysteries end tidily. This novel, however, refuses to end tidily. Certainly, the killer is identified and then dispatched, shot to death by Anna. Will believes the cache of memorabilia in Caleb’s apartment will help close seven other missing teenager cases. However, that is not how the novel ends. In the closing chapters, Anna heads back to the uncertainty of San Francisco. Can she return to her family? Can she carry her sorrows without allowing them to destroy her? The novel leaves such questions open as Anna heads down Highway 1. She rejects running away and, in that decision, reclaims hope. As she prepares to drive out of Mendocino, Anna embraces the complications of a life of joys and sorrows, agonies and ironies. She reflects on what she has learned: “Beauty and terror. Evil. Grace. Suffering. Joy. How they’re all here, every day, everywhere. Teaching us how to keep stepping forward into our lives, our purpose” (360). Like Cricket, who sits in the back seat of Anna’s car, ears tipped forward, eager to get on the road, Anna closes the novel determined to make “every minute holy” (116), borrowing from the Rainer Maria Rilke poem “I Am Too Alone in the World,” which Cameron Curtis so carefully copies out.

When the Stars Go Dark is a realistic police procedural. As the missing person’s case of Cameron Curtis expands to include other missing teen girls and even a path into solving the cold case of Jenny Ford, Detective Anna Hart, in joining Sheriff Will Flood, commits to the diligent, painstaking work of crime solving: combing a crime scene, tracking down clues, interviewing leads, following red herrings, preserving DNA evidence, drawing on the resources of the FBI, reviewing spools of grainy surveillance footage, and endlessly discussing the details of the case, always alert to the possibility they might have missed something critical. The work is frustrating, time-consuming, and demanding as evidenced by the emotional toll it takes on the lead detectives: Will is estranged from his family, and Anna believes her work caused her daughter’s death.

But the story is more than the processes of police detective work. Anna is more than a conscientious detective: “I wasn’t just involved in my cases, I lived and breathed them” (263). At critical moments during the investigation into Cameron’s disappearance, Anna has haunting dreams that speak to her about the direction of her investigation that assure her that she is on the right track to find the missing girl. The dreams, with their surreal suggestive atmosphere, cannot be quantified into a police report, but they are crucial to Anna’s investigation. She believes kids with trauma send powerful signals to possible predators; “bat signals” that reveal their damage and vulnerability. She follows hunches, despite her actions violating police protocols. When she steps into Cameron’s bedroom, she begs Cameron’s spirit to talk to her, show her where to find her. In the character of the psychic Tally Hollander, the novel offers a study in how intuition and powerful cosmic energy can help in solving crimes. In her visions of the missing teenagers, including Polly Klaas, Tally Hollander is singularly accurate.

The novel affirms the mind operating in harmony with the spirit, the power of what cannot be defined, quantified, or explained. Dreams, visions, shamans, and hunches drive the investigation that rescues Cameron and solves Jenny’s murder. As Sam, the Indigenous man who runs a yoga wellness center, says, “Mind. Body. Connection. Which part’s confusing?” (238).