Supernova Kristin Folger feels like she's on another planet. Her body keeps changing shape. Her mother wants her to dress like a girl. Her best friend's dating a weirdo. And there's a ghost in the attic that no one wants to talk about. In the era of Watergate, the Vietnam War, and David Bowie, fourteen-year-old Kristin navigates the external and internal changes that come at top speed. The Life History of a Star is Kristin's sometimes comical, sometimes cynical, always thoughtful diary about what her life has been like since the ghost arrived. It takes a lot of time and an unforgettable family therapy session for Kristin to begin to learn who the ghost was -- and who he still is. And where on earth she fits in. Caught up in the politics of her time and in the middle of a family who doesn't always understand her, Kristin makes a memorable journey through the byways of adolescence -- all the way to the stars and back again.