The Life List

The Life List Plot Summary

Introduction

# Reclaiming Dreams: A Journey Through Life's Forgotten Wishes The mahogany conference table gleams under fluorescent lights as Brett Bohlinger sits rigid in her designer suit, waiting to inherit an empire. At thirty-four, she's built her life around boardrooms and bottom lines, climbing the corporate ladder with ruthless precision. Her mother Elizabeth's funeral was yesterday. Today, she expects to claim her birthright as CEO of Bohlinger Cosmetics. Attorney Brad Midar's words shatter her world like glass against concrete. The company goes to her sister-in-law Catherine. Brett gets something else entirely—a crumpled piece of notebook paper covered in her fourteen-year-old handwriting. Twenty life goals, ten still unfinished. Have a baby. Get a dog. Fall in love. Teach school. Dreams she abandoned for stock options and corner offices. Elizabeth's final letter cuts deeper than any blade: complete the list within one year, or forfeit her inheritance forever. The woman who raised her has orchestrated this from beyond the grave, forcing Brett to choose between the life she built and the woman she was meant to become.

Chapter 1: The Unexpected Inheritance: A Life List Instead of a Company

Brett clutches the yellowed paper with trembling fingers, her mother's elegant script dancing in the margins beside her teenage scrawl. The conference room feels smaller now, the air thick with the weight of impossible expectations. Brad Midar watches her with knowing eyes, his rumpled charm masking the precision of a surgeon delivering a terminal diagnosis. The list reads like accusations from the grave. Perform live, on a super big stage. Help poor people. Buy a horse. Each goal a dagger to the carefully constructed life she's built with Andrew, her investment banker boyfriend who treats her like an expensive accessory. The girl who wrote these dreams believed in magic and possibility. The woman reading them has forgotten how to breathe without permission. Elizabeth's letter, read aloud in Brad's steady voice, reveals a mother's desperate love wrapped in manipulation. She watched her sensitive daughter disappear behind armor of ambition and anxiety, becoming someone she never intended to be. The business was never meant for Brett. She was born to teach, to nurture, to love with the fierce abandon she showed as a child before the world taught her to play it safe. Brett leaves the office carrying more than disappointment. She carries the weight of a year-long deadline and the terrifying possibility that her mother might be right. The champagne she'd brought for celebration sits unopened in her car as she drives through Chicago streets that suddenly feel foreign, heading toward a brownstone filled with memories of the girl she used to be.

Chapter 2: Reluctant Beginnings: First Steps on a Forgotten Path

The comedy club stage burns under harsh lights as Brett grips the microphone stand, her hands shaking so violently she fears they'll buckle. Third Coast Comedy hosts a raucous crowd that smells of beer and broken dreams. Her first goal—perform live, on a super big stage—seemed impossible until her mother's letter suggested stand-up as the perfect antidote to timidity. Her material dies on delivery. Jokes fall flat, timing crumbles, note cards flutter to the floor like wounded birds. A drunk at the front table begins heckling, his voice cutting through her stammering like a rusty blade. Seven minutes stretch like seven hours until Brad's countdown from the audience finally frees her from the spotlight. She flees to the parking lot in tears, convinced she's failed spectacularly. But Brad follows her into the cold night air, envelope in hand. Her mother's letter, read by lamplight, reveals the true purpose of the humiliation. Elizabeth watched her daughter lose her courage over the years, becoming anxious and unsure. The performance wasn't about success—it was about reclaiming the fearless girl who used to tell stories without caring who was listening. The teaching goal proves equally brutal. Brett's first day at Douglas Keyes Elementary descends into chaos when she loses control of her fifth-grade classroom. A fight breaks out, a student bleeds, and by day's end she's sent more children to the principal's office than most teachers manage in a year. The principal fires her before she can quit, reassigning her to homebound teaching—the last resort for students too sick, too troubled, or too dangerous for regular classrooms.

Chapter 3: Uncovering Truth: The Search for Johnny Manns

The red leather journal lies hidden in her mother's closet like a secret waiting to detonate. When Brett finally opens it, the truth hits with the force of a physical blow. Summer 1978, before she was born, Elizabeth Bohlinger fell desperately in love with a man who wasn't her husband. Johnny Manns, the musician who rented the apartment above theirs, awakened something in her mother that had been sleeping for twenty-seven years. The journal entries paint passion Brett never associated with her reserved mother. Late-night conversations stretching until dawn, stolen moments when Charles traveled for work, the agony of love that couldn't be sustained. Johnny had dreams of music that wouldn't accommodate a married woman with two children. When Charles discovered the affair, Johnny left town, never knowing Elizabeth carried his child. Brett stares at her reflection in her mother's mirror, finally understanding why Charles Bohlinger never loved her. She wasn't his daughter. The coldness, the distance, the constant feeling of inadequacy—it all crystallizes into terrible clarity. She spent her life trying to win love from a man who saw her as a living reminder of his wife's betrayal. The search for Johnny Manns consumes her savings and sanity. Private investigator Pohlonski chases shadows across decades, following trails that vanish like smoke. For months, Johnny Manns seems to have disappeared from the earth, leaving only echoes in her mother's words and the ache of a daughter's longing. The breakthrough comes unexpectedly at her childhood friend Carrie's house, where old home movies reveal the truth. Johnny Manns was actually Johnny Manson, using a stage name to escape the stigma of sharing a surname with a mass murderer.

Chapter 4: Breaking Free: Endings and New Foundations

Andrew's reaction to the life list reveals fault lines in their relationship with surgical precision. He agrees to help her complete the goals, but his motivation gleams transparent as chrome—the inheritance she might receive, the job he wants at Bohlinger Cosmetics, the lifestyle he feels entitled to maintain. When Brett refuses to guarantee him a position, citing her mother's objections, his mask finally slips. The breakup comes on Thanksgiving eve in her mother's living room, where they'd planned to host their first holiday together. Andrew's words cut deep: she isn't the agreeable woman he fell in love with, she's ruining not just the evening but her entire life. Brett watches him leave, taking four years of shared history and her last chance at conventional happiness. But freedom tastes sweeter than she expected. She moves into her mother's brownstone, adopts a scruffy mutt named Rudy from the animal shelter, and takes a job teaching homebound students on Chicago's South Side. The work challenges everything she thought she knew about education—kids too sick to attend regular school, families struggling with poverty and illness, a system stretched beyond breaking. Her most difficult student is Sanquita Bell, an eighteen-year-old pregnant girl living in Joshua House homeless shelter, battling kidney disease that threatens both her life and her unborn child's. The girl's fierce independence and deep mistrust make every lesson a negotiation, but Brett sees something of herself in Sanquita's determination to survive on her own terms. The job also introduces her to Dr. Garrett Taylor, a psychiatrist whose voice becomes a lifeline during her darkest moments, his wisdom a balm for wounds she's carried since childhood.

Chapter 5: Finding Purpose: Teaching, Helping, and Loving Again

Joshua House homeless shelter smells of industrial disinfectant and broken dreams, but Brett finds herself returning every Monday night. What began as charity evolves into genuine connection when she volunteers to work shifts, drawn by something she can't name. Miss Jean Anderson, the shelter's director, views Brett with deep suspicion—another pretty white woman looking to exploit the poor for her own gain. But Brett's consistent presence slowly erodes Jean's defenses. She isn't there for photo opportunities or political gain. She's there because she's found something missing her entire life—purpose that doesn't require a boardroom or a bottom line. In the shelter's cramped quarters, she discovers the gift her mother always saw in her, the ability to connect with people others have written off. Her relationship with Sanquita deepens through shared vulnerability. The pregnant teenager, carrying a baby she refuses to abort despite doctors' warnings, represents everything Brett longs for and fears she'll never have. When Brett thinks she might be pregnant herself, the possibility fills her with joy so pure it nearly lifts her off her feet. The disappointment of her false pregnancy on Christmas morning leaves her hollow, but it also clarifies what matters most. The search for her biological father finally bears fruit when the detective locates Johnny Manson in Seattle. But the reunion she's dreamed of remains elusive. Johnny is polite but distant, more concerned with protecting his established family—his twelve-year-old daughter Zoë has Down syndrome—than embracing his newfound daughter. Each conversation leaves Brett feeling more like an intruder than a long-lost child, confirming her deepest fear that she's unwanted even by the father she's searched for so desperately.

Chapter 6: Facing Rejection: The Father Who Wasn't Ready

Johnny Manson's voice on Christmas Day should answer every prayer Brett has whispered since childhood. Instead, it becomes another lesson in love's complicated mathematics. Her father—the word still feels foreign—lives in Seattle with Zoë, running a small music store and playing occasional gigs. He's kind but cautious, interested but distant. Zoë has a cold, he explains, making travel impossible. He can't risk exposing her to germs, can't disrupt her routine for a stranger who happens to share his DNA. Brett hears the subtext clearly: she's the complication, the reminder of a past he's moved beyond, the daughter who exists outside the family he's chosen to build. The rejection stings worse than Charles Bohlinger's coldness ever did, because this time she dared to hope. Her conversations with Dr. Garrett Taylor become a lifeline during this period. His gentle probing helps her understand that her need for love and protection is normal, healthy even. Many people bury those needs so deep they forget they exist, but Brett's willingness to remain vulnerable means she's still capable of healing. Their professional relationship evolves into something more personal, though neither acknowledges it directly. Meanwhile, Sanquita's condition worsens as her pregnancy progresses. The kidney disease accelerates, threatening both mother and child. Doctors recommend abortion, but the teenager refuses with fierce determination. Her baby is all she has left of hope, and she'd rather die than surrender that. Brett watches helplessly as the girl she's grown to love fights a battle she can't win, carrying a child who might be her only legacy.

Chapter 7: Authentic Choices: Discovering What Truly Matters

Spring brings crisis and unexpected grace. Sanquita goes into premature labor, her body finally surrendering to the disease that's been stalking her for months. In the sterile hospital room, Brett holds her student as she dies, making a promise that will change everything: she will raise this child as her own. Austin Elizabeth Bell enters the world weighing two pounds, fighting for every breath while her mother slips away despite every medical intervention. The custody battle reveals the brutal mathematics of family law. Tia Robinson, Sanquita's mother, arrives from Detroit like a vulture circling carrion. She's a catalog of addiction and neglect, but she's also Austin's grandmother, and the law favors blood over love. Brett watches helplessly as the system prepares to hand her daughter to a woman who sees only dollar signs in monthly survivor benefits. The courtroom drama unfolds with agonizing predictability until Jean Anderson appears like an avenging angel, clutching a notarized document that changes everything. Sanquita's final wishes, legally binding and impossible to dispute, grant custody to Brett. The victory tastes like tears and triumph mixed together, a bittersweet reminder that love sometimes requires sacrifice from those who can least afford it. Dr. Garrett Taylor's presence throughout the ordeal shifts from professional to personal. When he shows up at Brett's mother's birthday celebration, soaked by rain and clutching wildflowers, she knows she's found what she's been searching for without knowing it. The love that blooms between them is nothing like her careful relationship with Andrew. It's messy, complicated, built on shared laughter and comfortable silences. Garrett doesn't try to fix Brett or anticipate her needs—he simply sees her, completely and without judgment.

Summary

Brett Bohlinger's transformation from hollow success to authentic living proves that sometimes the most important inheritance isn't money but courage to become who we were meant to be. The fourteen-year-old girl who wrote that life list understood something the thirty-four-year-old woman had forgotten: dreams aren't childish fantasies but blueprints for a life worth living. Through loss and love, heartbreak and healing, Brett discovers her mother's final gift wasn't the money but permission to start over. Austin Elizabeth grows strong in the arms of a woman who finally learned what it means to love without conditions. The brownstone on Astor Street transforms from a shrine to the past into a foundation for the future, where Brett teaches homebound students and Garrett tends to broken minds, where love isn't a luxury but a lifeline. Elizabeth Bohlinger's posthumous wisdom echoes beyond the grave: it's never too late to become the person you were meant to be, and sometimes the most radical act is simply refusing to settle for less than everything your heart knows it deserves.

About Author

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Lori Nelson Spielman

Spielman traces the intricate journeys of personal growth and self-discovery through her emotionally resonant narratives. Drawing from her background as a speech pathologist and guidance counselor, she crafts stories that delve into themes of forgiveness, family secrets, and the pursuit of personal dreams. Her debut novel, "The Life List", exemplifies this approach by following a woman who embarks on fulfilling her childhood goals, a premise that has captivated international audiences and was optioned for a film adaptation by Fox 2000. Meanwhile, her second book, "Sweet Forgiveness", explores the transformative power of forgiveness through a chain letter and a mysterious pouch of stones.\n\nIncorporating her professional insights, Spielman’s writing often centers on women confronting pivotal life changes. This is evident in "The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany", a tale of three women traveling to Italy to break a family curse. Her method of blending romance and drama with personal growth ensures that her works remain accessible yet profound. Therefore, readers seeking heartfelt stories with relatable characters will find Spielman’s novels particularly engaging. Her books' international success, including topping bestseller lists in multiple countries, underscores her impact on contemporary women's fiction.\n\nSpielman’s ability to create compelling, character-driven plots makes her a notable author in the literary world. Her books not only entertain but also invite readers to reflect on their paths to self-discovery and reconciliation. Through her works, she connects with a broad audience, offering stories that resonate with those seeking narratives of transformation and hope. This short bio captures her essence as an author who expertly intertwines her life experiences with her literary creations.

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