More Memoir Than Science. In all honesty, one of the books I keep coming back to as an example of what this book *is* is Rachel Held Evans’ Searching For Sunday, just a more explicitly anti-Christian one rather than someone who still considered themselves a believer in Christ but was searching for a version of the faith that made more sense to themselves.
Here, we get a so-called “Elder Millennial” or “Xennial” similar in age to both Evans (before she tragically suddenly died a few years ago now) and myself, though from a different area of the US than the Southern Appalachia Evans and I both called home – the New Mexico deserts were Eaves-Egenes’ homeland. Like Evans and myself, Eaves-Egenes grew up in the American Church (she’s never ultra specific on which exact version beyond it being “evangelical”, but that can mean a wide-ish range of actual beliefs), but unlike myself (though similar to Evans in that Evans did become more open to the more mystical within Christianity), Eaves-Egenes ultimately becomes one of the so-called “Ex-vangelicals” who have seemingly left Christianity behind… and still seems quite bitter about the breakup. In Eaves-Egenes’ case, the breakup was even so bad that she ultimately fled the United States at all for the nation that is the world leader in creating Independence Days – the United Kingdom – and this too greatly informs the perspective you will read in this text.
Which is why it is so important to understand Eaves-Egenes’ background as expressed in this text – because understanding this will give you, the reader of my review, a far better look at what this book actually is than the description currently available as I write this review over two weeks after the book’s release (despite having it since a bit before Halloween 2025 as an Advance Review Copy). Indeed, the book in the description sounds extremely promising, particularly as someone who is a fan of the work of Dark Sky International who has never seen the Milky Way… and includes seeing it on his personal bucket list.
But what we get here isn’t the science and history based examination of dark skies and their significance to the human mind and body and to human civilization that the description leads us to think. Instead, what we do get here is more of a memoir/ travelogue about one person’s thoughts and experiences with the night sky and darkness in general, and framing the book as *this* would be a much clearer picture of what the consumer is actually getting.
Which actually leads to both of the star deductions – the first, my standard “lack of bibliography” deduction. Clocking in at just 11% documentation, this simply isn’t up to the even relaxed standards of 15% or so documentation and is barely half of the 20-30% documentation standard I once more rigidly held similar nonfiction titles to.
The second deduction actually leads from the first, as even I debate within myself whether the Sagan Standard – “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” – applies here, but the statements within the text also involve at least some things that I was actually and legitimately an expert on at least at one time… and which Eaves-Egenes is 100% dead wrong about. Specifically, her “throw-away” line about the rise of Columbine-style school shootings in the decades since that event, which happened her Senior year of high school (as she recalls in the text here) and my own Sophomore year. Being so wrong – and so explicitly led by activist propaganda talking points, no less – actually calls into question every other thing she similarly proclaims as fact, particularly in light of such a dearth of a bibliography.
As a personal memoir, this book is actually very well written, particularly for fans of Evans’ almost poetical prose. As a book of science and history… you’re going to want to read more well documented source material. There really is a lot to like here, but there is also a fair amount that if your politics lean to the right of AOC or Bernie Sanders… you may want to defenestrate this book fairly early on. But don’t, because the writing itself really is quite beautiful, and hearing from another perspective really does help us all become better informed and more well-rounded ourselves, as there really are at least some elements of truth here and thus at least some things that we can all learn from and perhaps learn to do better in our own lives because of.
Recommended.
This review of Nightfaring by Megan Eaves-Egenes was originally written on April 16, 2026.