Excerpt from Nightfaring by Megan Eaves-Egenes, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Going into the Dark

It's cold. I'm not sure how cold because I haven't checked my phone, but the temperature has been dropping since the Sun set hours ago. A layer of frost on the garden table sparkles from light spilling out of a neighbor's upstairs window.

I park myself on one of the frosting-over chairs facing south. South is the best direction to look when stargazing in London. This is especially true if you are south of the River Thames because you are facing away from the center of the city, the main source of light at night. In winter at this latitude, to the south, there is a reasonable view of the seasonal highlights in the sky: Orion, Sirius, Capella, the twin stars Castor and Pollux in the constellation Gemini, and my favorite, a little cluster of stars called the Pleiades.

I am a winter person. I grew up at a high elevation in the southwestern United States, and the arid winds are in my blood because sitting outside in cold weather and looking at the winter sky is my idea of perfection.

It might seem counterintuitive to go stargazing in a huge city. If you've ever looked up into the night sky in a place like London,

New York, or Hong Kong, you know that too much artificial light has bleached the sky, making it impossible to see the stars. This washed-out sky—an insipid yellow from wasted light particles scattering up into the air—is a phenomenon called skyglow. It happens because lights are kept on when they aren't necessary, fixtures aren't pointed downward, bulbs are left bare or unshielded, and curtains and blinds aren't closed. On a clear London evening, you might be able to see only ten stars of the roughly five thousand that would be visible in a truly dark area.

Tonight, I pull a blanket around my shoulders and breathe in the sharp air, wishing away the neighbors' light even though I know better—they keep it on all night.

I can trace the journey that follows in this book to a night just like this one, almost a decade ago, when I arrived home from a late-running work event and immediately sought solace under the stars in the garden. I poured a glass of Malbec and squinted through the skyglow.

That version of me didn't realize that she was facing into a period of darkness that would change the entire trajectory of her life. Within a year, my beloved stepfather would pass away, and my marriage would crumble. Within two, I'd be laid off from my dream job, and within three, the whole world would be plunged into the dark stillness of a global pandemic. That night, I was just hoping to see the same stars I remembered from my childhood in the northern New Mexico desert.

In the years that followed those events, I used garden stargazing as therapy. I mourned, wept, reflected, and meditated under the night sky. A lifetime of pent-up trauma was unleashed under the unbothered stars. I confronted darkness as both a natural habitat and a metaphorical and spiritual condition. The more time I spent in darkness, the more it seemed to heal me, and the more I yearned for its quiet embrace.

Eventually, I wasn't so sad anymore, and the stars were still there, rising after the sunset and setting with the seasons. Summer turned to autumn, winter frost, then spring daffodils. Another year with more challenges, joy, laughter, and faces new and familiar. Some more things were lost, and some were gained. Still, the stars kept me company. It gave me solace to know they had seen it all before—every anguish, every word written, every mistake made—and they would be there for an eternity after me.

But knowing that the full starry grandeur was blocked from my view also made me long to escape the skyglow. I began studying astronomy and traveling to dark locations to see the stars. I learned about light bulbs, light-emitting diodes, and shields, and got involved with advocacy against light pollution. From this longing, I set out to truly understand the dark. To try to comprehend why we are quickly destroying it, what drives our fear of the darkness, how humans have interacted with the night from ancient times, and what the future may hold. My search took me across the world, from my homeland in New Mexico to Mount Everest, from the North York Moors to the Argentinian jungle, and many dark patches in between.

Excerpted from NIGHTFARING by Megan Eaves-Egenes, copyright ©2026 by Megan Eaves-Egenes. Used with permission of Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.