When the Stars Go Dark

Detective Anna Hart takes a phone call at home. Distracted by a call about a break in a difficult case, Anna Hart takes her eye off the car where her two-year-old daughter is strapped into her car seat in preparation for a trip to the grocery store. When the child wiggles out of her car seat and is killed by a neighbor backing into the street, Anna experiences grief complicated by guilt. In a novel in which every principal character harbors a secret about their past, this story does not come until nearly the last pages. It is the secret Anna cannot bring herself to acknowledge.

Running from her grief and trauma, Anna has left her family and San Francisco for Mendocino. Anna, a first-person narrator, doesn’t reveal the details of her daughter’s accident until the final pages of the book. Taking that phone call, however, reflects Anna’s defining characteristic: her immense and generous heart, suggested by her last name. As a detective specializing in missing and abused children, Anna becomes emotionally involved with each case, each child speaking to her in a personal way. Against the counsel of her sergeant, Anna works each case by relying on her intuition, what her heart and her gut tell her.