The Book of Stars 1999

Penny and Mary are sisters living together in a tenement apartment in a seedy unnamed city. With their parents long dead, the elder sister Penny shoulders the heavy responsibility of caring for her younger sister, who is fifteen and fighting a rapid decline from cystic fibrosis.

Inside their cramped home, Mary spends most of her time indoors, turning her life, dreams, and fragile hope into a vivid scrapbook she calls the Book of Stars and Lovely Things. In its pages she fashions herself as an astronaut adrift in space, slowly pulled toward the sun and a doom that feels inevitable.

Penny is a once-promising poet who has turned to prostitution and drugs to numb the ache of watching her sister slip away and to cope with a harsh present.

Nearby, a quiet young man from war-torn Eastern Europe with a limp moves in next door; Kristjan becomes a quiet presence in their lives.

Penny receives letters from a prisoner D. B. Sweeney moved by her poetry. She won’t read or answer them, so Mary reads the letters for her and keeps the possibility of connection alive.

Through these exchanged words, Mary helps tether Penny to the world beyond their walls, and the sisters arrange small moments and rituals that remind them both to stay human.

Together, Penny and Mary navigate life, death, and the universal need to reach out for someone.