Stardust with a To-Do List

 

Faith Morgan has spent her life building fortresses. As the CEO of a thriving environmental nonprofit, she has perfected the art of control—her spreadsheets are immaculate, her apartment is minimalist, and her emotions are safely locked away behind a wall of data and logic. But when her best friend and CFO embezzles over a million dollars and vanishes, the fortress crumbles. Faith is left with nothing but a negative bank balance, a shattered reputation, and the terrifying realization that she has no idea who she is without her carefully constructed identity.

 

Across Chicago, three other people are also learning that life doesn't follow the plan.

 

Brian Jacobs, a high school football coach and widowed father, is drowning in grief and guilt. Two years after losing his wife in a car accident, he's still driving past the intersection where she died, still unable to tell their five-year-old son the stories he needs to hear, still convinced that anger is the only thing holding him together.

 

Heather Donovan has built a family of hundreds as a beloved high school principal—but goes home every night to an empty house. Decades after a teenage diagnosis closed the door on the children she'd always dreamed of, she's made peace with a life of purpose rather than partnership. Until a retired CEO with kind eyes and his own complicated history walks into her Career Day.

 

Chris Miller spent thirty years climbing the corporate ladder, only to reach the top and find himself alone in a silent condo. A heart attack, a divorce, and a strained relationship with his son have taught him that the legacy he built was just a sandcastle. Now he's looking for something real—and finding it in the most unexpected place.

 

Then there's Tyra and Emily, a married couple running a small wellness studio, who are learning that love isn't just about dreaming together—it's about balancing the dream with the spreadsheet, the faith with the facts, the mission with the margin.

 

As these five lives intersect and intertwine, they discover that the divine isn't found only in cathedrals and mountaintops. It's in the laundry, the groceries, the packed lunches, the tired sighs, the unexpected laughter. It's in the choice to show up, day after day, even when showing up is hard.

 

Stardust with a To-Do List is a novel about the tension between the cosmic and the mundane—about people who are made of stars but still have to remember to buy milk. It's a story of betrayal and forgiveness, grief and grace, and the beautiful, messy work of building a family from scattered pieces. Most of all, it's a reminder that we are all constellations: separate stars, yes, but connected by invisible lines of love that hold us together when gravity isn't enough.

For fans of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, The Guncle, and the works of Fredrik Backman, this is a novel that will make you laugh, cry, and maybe—just maybe—look at your own to-do list a little differently.