The transition from the innocence and naivete of childhood to the dark realizations and awareness of adulthood is defined by how children engage, endure, and triumph over the challenges in their lives.

Few of the families in When the Stars Go Dark are presented as stable or reliable. Parents die; parents abandon their kids as nuisances and distractions; parents immerse themselves in work. Here, young characters endure the “whiplash of abandonment” (77) that defines the empty feeling in a child when their birth parents, for whatever reason, disappear and catapult that child in a single momentous day into a “new home, new identity, new family” (77).

The novel focuses on kids trying to navigate loss. For both Detective Anna Hart, Cameron Curtis, and Shannan, for instance, birth parents are indifferent, immune to their kids’ needs either because they self-medicate with drugs or alcohol or, because of poor decisions and reckless behavior, they end up incarcerated, abdicating entirely the responsibilities of raising their children. In the days immediately following her mother’s overdose, Anna, then eight, attempts to provide her younger brother and sister some semblance of “normalcy” despite her emptiness and panic. She attempts to be a calming, adult force, feeding and entertaining her brother and sister, but the suddenness of the adult role is both overwhelming and traumatizing.