Paula McLain

It is 1993, before cell phones, DNA testing and widespread use of the internet. San Francisco police detective Anna Hart grew up in the California foster care system, placed in several homes, separated from her younger siblings. Her final placement, a happy one lasting 11 years, was in Mendocino. So, when tragedy strikes, she leaves her husband, takes a leave of absence from the police and returns to her last happy place, hoping to regroup.

Glancing at the bulletin board in the local coffee show more shop, she sees a Missing Persons poster for 15-year-old Cameron Curtis who has recently vanished in the night. The poster brings back 20-year-old memories when her friend and neighbor Jenny Ledford disappeared. Her body was later found washed up on the shore. That and the fact that Anna tracks missing kids, that’s her job and she’s good at it, compels Anna to insert herself into the police investigation. Luckily, childhood friend, Will Flood, is chief of police and welcomes her involvement. Will’s father was police chief during Jenny’s kidnapping and the fact that her abductor was never caught changed him for the rest of his life. Now it seems Cameron slipped out of her house to meet an unknown person. Unfortunately, there are no clues and Will doesn’t want to end up like his father.

Shortly after Cameron’s disappearance, 12-year-old Polly Klaas who lived in a neighboring town is kidnapped at knife point from her suburban bedroom in front of two friends who were bound and had pillow cases put over their heads. (This is a real case.) The town is galvanized to search for Polly. Anna tells Will that Mendocino must do the same, get out in force.

As the weeks go by and the investigation stalls, it is found that a third girl had gone missing earlier, also still missing. Could all of these abductions be the actions of one person? To know this, Anna needs to get inside the heads of the missing girls, find some similarities and determine how they might have met the psychopath who abducted them.

When the Stars Go Dark is police procedural, psychological thriller at its best. Readers will be rooting for Anna, one of the best characters I’ve read in a long time, and for Cameron’s recovery. McLain uses Anna’s backstory to fill in her life and see what makes her tick. The similarities between Cameron’s and Anna’s upbringing prompt Anna to reflect on her own childhood.

McLain herself was part of the California foster care system for over a decade and a survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of her foster parents. Luckily, unlike Anna, she and her two sisters were never separated. She has said in interviews that this book is the most personal one she’s written, even more so than her 2003 memoir, Like Family: Growing Up in Other People’s Houses, a Memoir.

The emotion and insight she pours into When the Stars Go Dark adds to the impact of the victims’ psyche and bullseye target they wear that may be invisible to us but is recognizable to sexual predators.

The inclusion of the real-life Polly Klaas kidnapping and similarities of Jenny Ledford’s kidnapping to another actual kidnapping, that of Jaycee Dumont, just add to the atmosphere.

In my opinion, this book is perfect in every way and worth 5 stars on any scale and should be up for an Edgar award. Her other works have been described as compelling and spellbinding and I’d characterize When the Stars Go Dark similarly. One reviewer said the book had “…great pacing, fascinating characters, thrills, beauty, peril, violence and forgiveness.” I’d add hope.

I urge you to go to McLain’s website, paulamclain.com and read some of the essays she has posted there.

Mystery lovers and lovers of literary fiction and true crime, fans of Tana French will devour When the Stars Go Dark as quickly as I did. I couldn’t put it down. I also highly recommend Lisa Gardner’s recent book, Before She Disappeared, which also deals with missing children. show less

Let me first begin by saying that Paula McClain is a very talented author. Her diligence in research and her ability to set the reader in a different time and place is showcased in Circling The Sun. Kenya of the early 20th century came alive to me. And I felt that I knew and understood the characters well. I just didn’t like them very much. 😉 That’s not the fault of McClain — this is a biographical novel, after all, and the warts are very much in evidence. Beryl Markham was an show more amazingly independent and progressive woman for her time, yet she continually makes the same mistakes in her relationships with men. Some of that can be chalked up to her hands-off upbringing and her parents’ negligence, but sometimes we just need to learn from our mistakes. Colonial Kenya seemed to be a place for those who bucked the norms of the day or the misfits who just didn’t fit in their home societies. The portrayal is fascinating. So I guess I shouldn’t have really expected a lot of high ground from the people who populated Markham’s life. Much of the novel features her early life and loves; less focus is put on her flying acommplishments. While I thought the book was very well-written, I’d recommend reading Markham’s memoir West with The Night if you only have a limited time to devote to the subject. It may be a little more biased, but I liked Markham more in it. (Please note: this is a general market novel — adult language and situations.)

Audience: adults.

(I downloaded the audiobook from my local library through Libby. All opinions expressed are mine alone.) show less

Paula McLain has done it again and perhaps even exceeded [b:The Paris Wife|8683812|The Paris Wife|Paula McLain|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320545874l/8683812._SX50_.jpg|13556031] in her continuing look at the loves and marriages of Ernest Hemingway. How fascinating to know that Hemingway's third wife, Martha Gellhorn, was a writer and journalist in her own right and owed little if anything to the fame of her famous husband.

What an amazing woman show more Marty Gellhorn was! She did things as a war journalist that would have struck fear into the hearts of most men, and she did them right through into her eighties. McLain made me believe in Gellhorn completely and she painted what seemed a very realistic portrait of Hemingway at this stage in his life. Talk about your complex men.

Even knowing a bit about Hemingway's life and personality, and despite also knowing the outcome of this "love story", I found the story riveting. I felt the tension, the love, the confusion, and Marty's desire to maintain herself and not be lost in the whirlwind of a larger than life figure like Hemingway. I also found it easy to understand how he pulled at her and what made her so vulnerable to him.

The last bit of heaven for me was knowing what was occuring in Hemingway's life as he produced what I consider to be his greatest novel, [b:For Whom the Bell Tolls|46170|For Whom the Bell Tolls|Ernest Hemingway|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1492591524l/46170._SY75_.jpg|2252079]. I have now promised myself a re-read--after all, I want to see how much of Marty Gellhorn made its way into the character of Maria. show less

The Paris Wife deserves much kudos for its beautiful evocation of a place and an era. The Paris of the 1920s comes alive, from the grittiness of the streets to the life of the literary scene. McLain also does a supurb job of depicting Hadley Richardson's marriage to Ernest Hemingway, with all its faults, without condescending to a mere demonization of Hemingway and canonization of Hadley, which would have been a simplistic treatment of her material. Drawing boutifully on source material and show more weaving creative narrative seamlessly in, McLain creates an unforgettable portrait: many unforgettable portraits, actually, as even minor characters like Zelda Fitzgerald are memorably and finely crafted here.

We feel, in Hadley's narrative voice, the tensions and anxities that plague her from childhood through her marriage. She is a perceptive character, and through her eyes we see Hemingway's utter devotion to his craft and see presaged his eventual suicide. Though we know this is a love story that is doomed to end badly, the storyline is nonetheless compelling and thrusts you ever-forward. Knowing the end makes this story no less gripping, so well is it told and so many are the nuances that are gradually unveiled.

Readers will find themselves spellbound by the tale of the shy Hadley, who is smitten with the younger, dashing writer Ernest Hemingway. After a whirlwind romance, they spirit away to Paris and immerse themselves in the Left Bank atmosphere, where we begin to feel the weight of Hadley's increasing discomfort with the bohemian lifestyle and many open marriages. Motherhood ties her down further, leaving Ernest free to drift farther: their separation begins to feel like an inevitability, an event waiting only for the right woman to step in and drive the wedge between them. The chapters in which this wedge appears and the marriage begins to fall apart are positively grueling and painful; Hadley's agony is only too perceptible, but let me reiterate that it is not made out to be a simple case of a man with a wandering eye leaving behind his faithful wife without so much as a backward glance.

Emotions run high throughout the novel, but it is not angsty or weepy: this is no mere piece of throwaway "chick lit." McLain works her craft subtly and knows well the trick of driving the knife home with a particularly well-aimed sentence that reveals precisely how fragmented someone's world has become. In the midst of such an energized world, full of such animated (though often rather deplorable) people, McLain peels back all the layers of history and shows us the soul of one woman laid bare. show less