The Forest of Vanishing Stars is a work of historical fiction set primarily in Eastern Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. During this time, more than three million Polish Jews were forced into “ghettos,” a term for places the Nazis forcibly isolated groups of people, primarily Jewish people, during World War II, and eventually murdered by Nazi forces. Nearly 90% of the Jewish population of Poland perished, but a considerable number escaped into the dense forests along the border of Poland and Belarus (then Belorussia), where they avoided capture and even carried out missions against the German aggressors until the war ended. The Forest of Vanishing Stars draws from historical records and the narratives of survivors to tell the story of Yona and the people she guides to safety.

The events of The Forest of Vanishing Stars begin in Berlin in 1922, four years after the end of World War I and just a year after Adolf Hitler assumed control of the National Socialist German Workers Party—a party that Siegfried Juttner, Yona’s father, was eager to join. By 1930, the NSDAP had become the second-largest political party in Germany, and Hitler’s rise to power had begun.