The Forest of Vanishing Stars

“If one listened closely enough, nature always spilled her secrets, which of course were the secrets of God. And now, it was God who had brought Jerusza here, to a fog-cloaked Berlin street corner, where she would be responsible for changing the fate of a child, and perhaps a piece of the world, too.”

These two sentences lay out the themes of Yona’s story. Nature is a manifestation of God, and by obeying that divine impulse, Jerusza makes it possible for this chosen child to fulfill her world-changing destiny.

“Have I not taught you by now that the forest takes care of its own?”

Jerusza and the young Yona have reached the swamp, foreshadowing a time when Yona will lead the group of Jewish survivors as they flee the Germans. Here, Jerusza emphasizes once again that the forest is a refuge and protector.

“You are what you were born to be.”

This quote from Jerusza to Yona establishes one of the novel’s key themes: the complex relationship between Identity, Destiny, and Choice. Questions about fate versus self-determination are common in coming-of-age arcs like Yona’s, as the young protagonist grapples with exterior expectations while forming an interior understanding of their identity and purpose. Resolving this tension—and understanding who she is on her own terms—becomes a cornerstone of Yona’s character development.

“Jerusza’s voice had waned to a whisper. ‘Would you have traded the life you’ve had with me for one with evil parents, just because it came with love?’

‘I don’t know,’ Yona said. ‘You never gave me the chance to choose.’”

The tension between destiny and choice arises multiple times in The Forest of Vanishing Stars. In taking Yona to the forest, Jerusza believes she is fulfilling a destiny larger than the child herself, but Yona loses agency over her own fate because of that. At the same time, no loss of agency is necessarily permanent, and Yona makes choices that fulfill the destiny Jerusza envisioned while cultivating love in her life as well.

“Yona smiled and turned her left wrist over, showing them her birthmark. ‘This is how I got my name.’

‘It looks just like a real dove,’ said the older girl.

‘Do you want to know a secret?’ Yona asked, and both girls leaned in, eyes wide. ‘I can feel this dove sometimes, when I’m hungry or sad or scared. It feels as if she’s trying to fly.’”

Yona’s birthmark is a reminder of the magical origins of her story and the things that set her apart from others. As she explains to the children in the camp, it comes alive to alert her to dangers. Doves symbolize peace and hope, and Yona’s deep connection to her birthmark and name reinforces that saving others is her destiny.

“What matters is what is in your heart, I think, and that’s so much more complex and personal than how you worship God.”

The rapport between Zus and Yona deepens in this conversation, in which Zus assures her that she is family to the group and that belonging comes from the heart, not external factors. Zus respects and accepts Yona just as she is, and his statement echoes the novel’s themes of Faith and the Nature of the Divine as well as Identity, Destiny, and Choice.

“In times of greatest darkness, the light always shines through, because there are people who stand up to do brave, decent things […] in moments like this, it doesn’t matter who you were born to be. It matters what you choose to become.”

Zus’s words echo one of the most prominent questions of the book: What rules our lives—choice or destiny? Jerusza taught Yona that she is a child of destiny and the instrument of a great plan, but Zus tells her many times that her choices determine her fate.

“She would return to the world she knew, the world in which she flew alone, a dove in the wilderness, untethered.”

After finding Aleksander and Sulia together, Yona takes refuge in the only life she’s ever known—alone, wild, and free in the forest. Although Yona yearns for connection with the people she saves, Aleksander’s actions remind her that she is an outsider. In leaving, she realizes Jerusza was right: The forest is her true home, and the dove reference here emphasizes that Yona is acting true to herself in this moment.

“[Yona] thought of the way fate had put her in the path of the refugees in the forest […] had she failed God by turning her back now?”

In a conversation with the nun Maria Andrzeja, Yona continues to struggle with the idea that she was destined from birth to help the Jews survive. Jerusza has always told her that her destiny is from God, so in making the choice to leave after Aleksander’s betrayal, she wonders if she has failed her part in God’s grand plan.

“‘Lives are circles spinning across the world, and when they’re meant to intersect, they do,’ Jerusza had said on her deathbed.”

The question of destiny versus choice arises again here. Yona thinks of Jerusza’s words when she sees her father in the village square, suggesting that fate moves events in ways people don’t always understand. In that moment, it seems that her mysterious destiny is unfolding, so her path crosses her father’s at a crucial moment when lives hang in the balance.

“Yona knew that everything in her life up to this moment had been designed to lead her here, to this place, where she might be the one person with the power to halt what was about to happen.”

The tension between being a pawn of destiny and an agent with power of her own finds resolution in the conclusion of this pivotal scene, as Yona accepts both the fate envisioned by Jerusza and her own choice to create change. Yona might have been chosen for a fate beyond her understanding, but in this moment, the decision to intervene is one only she can make in her position as Juttner’s daughter.

“[Juttner] stared at her in disbelief. ‘Again with the nuns? You ask as if any of us has a choice. You ask as if fate is in your hands, or mine.’”

Juttner justifies his actions toward the nuns—and in a larger sense, the actions of the Nazis toward the Jews—by invoking a fate that no one can deny. Yona’s next words—“But it is. Isn’t it?” reveal that she does believe that people can affect their own fates through their choices.

“When life opens a door, the others behind it slam closed. It was impossible to know what would have been, what could have been, because the choices Jerusza made forever altered her future.”

Yona speculates about what her life might have been if she had grown up in Berlin. This quote points to the irony in the conflict between Yona’s choice and her destiny. Believing that Yona was destined for great things, Jerusza made specific choices that shaped her future while denying her the opportunity to make choices of her own.

“We accept our fate. All of us. You must do the same.”

The nun Maria Andrzeja speaks for the eight nuns who will die for the townspeople to live, embracing the fate that they have chosen. She urges Yona to accept both their fate and her own, though she can affect her fate through her choices.

“[Maria Andrzeja:] ‘Never forget, Yona. God is your father, and he is always with you.’

Jerusza had always taught her that the forest was her parent, both mother and father, and what was the forest but God’s creation, anyhow? Perhaps even when Yona had felt most alone, she’d always been surrounded by a father who loved her just as she was.”

The theme of the nurturing forest and its connection to the divine resurfaces here, as Yona also struggles to reconcile her memories of Juttner with his current self. In the all-encompassing forest, Yona has a connection to both an earthly and a heavenly father willing to accept her entirely.

“She was not Jerusza’s —she never had been—and she knew that now. But neither was she her German father’s. She belonged only to herself, a dove of the dark forest.”

The dove represents Yona’s real identity, made visible by the birthmark that inspired her name. Doves represent peace, love, and hope—qualities that Yona embodies in her efforts to save the Jewish refugees and the nuns.

“The universe is always in balance,” Jerusza said. “Summer and winter. Day and night. Sustenance and poison. Good and evil. To know the light, you must also know darkness.”

Jerusza calls on the natural movements of the universe to explain the often-harsh contrasts in the world. The contrast between light and darkness echoes the meaning of Hanukkah, which celebrates light in the face of darkness. Yona’s efforts to lead the Jews to safety is an act of light against darkness.

“Sometimes it’s the jagged edges that allow us to fit together. Sometimes it’s the breaks that make us strong.”

As Zus struggles with the wounds of his past, Yona says that she too is broken. Just as shards of shattered glass can be joined again, she reminds him that brokenness can be a strength against future hard times, not a weakness. Sharing one’s pain and trauma can also bring them closer to others; life can go on in community if not alone.

“We all come into this world with our fate unwritten, Yona. Your identity isn’t determined by your birth. All that matters is what we make ourselves into, what we choose to do with our lives.”

As Yona worries that her birth into a German family, to a father who became a Nazi, might have made her into someone terrible, Zus tells her that her destiny is her choice, not preordained as Jerusza has always told her.

“You are a warrior. You are a hero, and a fighter, and a savior. You are a caretaker and a life giver.”

As Zus enumerates all the things he sees in Yona, his words reinforce his unwavering belief in her and his full acceptance of who she is. These are all roles that Yona has chosen to play in her efforts to help the refugees survive. This speech situates him in contrast with Aleksander, who could not accept Yona as a leader due to her gender.

“It was her choices—and perhaps the war in her blood, too—that had led all of them here, to this moment, and she couldn’t let this happen …she couldn’t be responsible for the death of the only person on earth who loved her for who she was.”

As Juttner points his gun at Zus, Yona realizes that both destiny—in the form of the “war in her blood”—and her own decisions have the power to shape events. Zus believes in Yona’s ability to choose, and she chooses to save him. Here, Yona makes her final choices about her identity in her arc; she chooses Jerusza, the forest, Zus, and the Jewish refugees as her family, not her biological father.

“The world faded around her and the stars vanished from the sky.”

The final words of the chapter reveal the origin of the novel’s title and echo Yona’s love of the stars, under whose light she has always found peace. The fading of Yona’s beloved stars represents the fading of her consciousness after Juttner shoots her, and leaves open the question of whether she survives.

“Many years later, children still told tales of the old woman who lived deep in the heart of the Nalibocka Forest, the one with the one green eye and one blue.”

This quote introduces a summation of Yona’s life after the war, told in the style of myth and legend without mentioning her name at all. Here, we know that Yona not only survived but thrived in the forest, becoming a legend to the generations that followed.