To the Moon and Back Summary: Eliana Ramage’s Saga
TL;DR
In June 1987, a woman drives through the night from Texas to Oklahoma with two small daughters and glass still caught in the youngest child’s hair.
That single act of flight sets the course of Eliana Ramage’s novel To the Moon and Back, a multigenerational story that stretches from a bread factory in Tahlequah to a research habitat on the slopes of Mauna Loa.
The book follows the Harper family across four decades, tracing how a mother’s secrets and a daughter’s obsession with outer space shape one another.
Alongside them runs the story of a young Cherokee woman raised Mormon in Utah and caught in a custody battle under the Indian Child Welfare Act.
- Who: Steph Harper, a Cherokee girl who decides astronomy is her way out; her sister Kayla; their mother Hannah; and Della Ericson, a Cherokee adoptee raised in Utah.
- What: A forty-year arc from a 1987 escape out of an abusive marriage to a 2027 lunar mission.
- Core tension: Ambition versus family, individual escape versus collective responsibility.
- Recurring threads: Spaceflight training, Cherokee language and craft, ICWA law, land protection at Mauna Kea, and several queer relationships.
- Format: Eight chronological parts, 56 named sections, plus emails, blog posts, Tinder profiles, and habitat logs.
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Characters in This Book
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Stephanie “Steph” Harper / Ahnawake | The central protagonist, a Cherokee scientist who pursues astronomy, geology, and a career at NASA. |
| Kayla Harper / Palakiko | Steph’s younger sister, an artist, activist, and blogger known as thatindigenousmama. |
| Hannah Harper | Steph and Kayla’s mother, who leaves an abusive marriage and raises her daughters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. |
| David R. James | Steph and Kayla’s biological father, who survives the 1987 crash and dies in 2016. |
| Brett | A Cherokee middle school teacher and Hannah’s longtime boyfriend who helps raise the girls. |
| Della Owens / Emma Ericson | A Cherokee woman raised by LDS adoptive parents in Utah and the subject of an ICWA custody case. |
| Matthew Owens | Della’s biological Cherokee father, who fights a lengthy legal battle for her custody. |
| Simon and Josephine Ericson | Della’s adoptive parents in Provo, Utah. |
| Felicia Palakiko | Kayla and Jason’s daughter, raised around protest camps and activist spaces. |
| Jason Palakiko | A Native Hawaiian veteran, law student, and later corporate lawyer; Kayla’s husband and Felicia’s father. |
| Nadia | An engineer and astronaut candidate who becomes Steph’s crewmate and romantic interest. |
| Sam Sherman | A Prairie Band Potawatomi student at Hollis, later a neonatologist and Della’s co-parent. |
| Sandra | An Ojibwe pre-med student and leader in the Native American Student Association at Hollis. |
| Meredith | Steph’s middle school crush and co-star in a Trail of Tears play. |
| Daniel | A childhood peer in Tahlequah who dates Kayla and Meredith. |
| Beth | A Cherokee Tribal Council member involved with Brett. |
| Dr. Lars Carson | An astrophysicist at Duke University whose lecture Steph attends as a teenager. |
| Will | The manager at the Cherokee Heritage Museum who fires Steph. |
| Dr. Lucy Andrews | A biology professor at Hollis College who mentors Della. |
| Allison | A former Air Force pilot and commander of the HI-SEAS Mauna Loa simulation. |
| Adisu, Aziz, Jed | Crewmates in the HI-SEAS Mars simulation habitat. |
| Dr. Diana Watts | A Chickasaw Freedmen descendant, Exeter teacher, and camp educator on Mauna Loa. |
| Mark Wells | A Kanaka traditional tattoo artist at the Mauna Loa protest camp. |
| The Physicist | Steph’s ex-girlfriend during graduate school at Berkeley. |
| Daryan | A math teacher who dates Nadia. |
| Captain Tom | The commander during the NEEMO underwater mission in Florida. |
To the Moon and Back Summary: Full Story Recap
Spoilers follow.
Hannah Harper leaves Dallas in June 1987 after her husband David James drives his car off a cliff during a violent outburst. She drives overnight to Tahlequah, Oklahoma, with five-year-old Steph and toddler Kayla.
Hannah works long shifts at a bread factory and raises her daughters with Cherokee history and language, though she rarely discusses her own past. She tells them their father died in the crash.
By 1995, thirteen-year-old Steph is fixated on space and wants to attend Space Camp in Huntsville and apply to Phillips Exeter Academy.
Hannah cannot afford Space Camp, so she and her boyfriend Brett stage a local “Space-Culture Camp” in the school gym and nearby woods.
During a field trip to a Tulsa climbing gym, Steph learns Hannah hid her Exeter acceptance letter, which carried a full merit scholarship. Hannah says she feared losing her daughter; Steph frames the letter and keeps it in the living room.
Brett teaches the girls Cherokee verbs and takes them stargazing and to the 1997 Tri-Council meeting in North Carolina. On that trip Steph sees Brett touching council member Beth’s thigh, and Hannah later discovers the affair.
Brett moves out temporarily, keeps acting as a father figure, and launches a campaign for Principal Chief. Steph performs in a Trail of Tears play and shares a brief backstage intimacy with Meredith, who then pulls away.
In the summer of 1999 Steph works as a basket-weaving reenactor at the Cherokee Heritage Museum. Fired for inventing stories for tourists, she tries to steal baskets to cover college fees and is stopped by Meredith.
Steph writes a Common Application essay that uses her trauma and Cherokee background to gain admission to elite universities. Eliana Ramage alternates these chapters with the story of Della Ericson.
Della, born Della Owens, was adopted as an infant by Simon and Josephine Ericson in Provo, Utah. She spent five years in Oklahoma with her biological father Matthew Owens before a court returned her to the Ericsons under the Indian Child Welfare Act.
Each year Della flies to Oklahoma for a court-mandated visitation day with Matthew. She moves between her Utah home, her family’s Mormon faith, and a Cherokee identity she feels distant from.
In September 2000 Steph and Della both enroll at Hollis College in Connecticut and meet at a Native American Student Association barbecue.
Despite Della’s engagement to Ethan, they kiss in a dorm bathroom and spend the night together.
Della leaves the next morning, joins a winter mission trip to Mexico City, ends her engagement, and devotes herself to service. Their relationship restarts during a Holocaust graveyard restoration trip in Poland in 2001.
By sophomore year they are openly dating, and Della majors in biology under Professor Lucy Andrews. After the September 11 attacks, campus tensions rise.
Kayla, who dropped out of high school, becomes pregnant by Hollis student and Native Hawaiian veteran Jason Palakiko and moves into his dorm room. When a conservative campus paper prints a racist op-ed, Kayla handcuffs herself to the president’s gate in a handmade jingle dress.
The image becomes known as “The Photo.” Kayla goes into labor at the scene and gives birth to her daughter, Felicia.
The Space Shuttle Columbia explosion in February 2003 hardens Steph’s awareness of mortality and pushes her to earn scuba, skydiving, and pilot qualifications. In spring 2004, Della’s parents visit Connecticut.
At a dinner in an oyster bar, Steph learns Della turned down every marine biology PhD program she was accepted to, choosing a low-level lab assistantship in Moscow to follow Steph’s Fulbright. Steph ends the relationship by moving Della’s belongings across the hall the night before graduation.
From 2005 to 2015 Steph earns dual PhDs in astronomy and geology at UC Berkeley and takes research fellowships in Japan and Italy. She avoids commitment and dates casually.
At Berkeley she spends two years with a physicist who offers a prenuptial agreement to relocate to Houston if Steph becomes an astronaut. Steph walks away and falls into a depressive episode until Kayla flies out to care for her.
Kayla, married to Jason and raising Felicia in Hawai’i, builds a large following as an Indigenous parenting and lifestyle blogger. In December 2014 the family visits Steph in Italy, where twelve-year-old Felicia runs away up Mount Vesuvius at night and Steph brings her back.
In May 2015 Steph is selected for NASA’s incoming astronaut class. In 2016 she joins a one-year simulated Mars habitat, HI-SEAS, on Mauna Loa with Aziz, Adisu, Jed, Commander Allison, and Nadia.
Outside the habitat, Native Hawaiian land protectors camp to oppose construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea. Kayla and Felicia have joined the camp without NASA’s knowledge.
Steph sneaks out of the air lock at night to visit them and keeps notes on the camp in a notebook under her mattress. When protesters cut the habitat’s water supply, Commander Allison finds the notebook.
To keep Nadia, now her covert partner, out of a security audit, Steph hands over the logs. The decision ends her chances of an active space mission assignment.
Steph then learns her father David James died in Texas. The obituary shows he survived the 1987 crash, lost a leg, remarried, and raised four more children, meaning Hannah had let her daughters believe he was dead.
Steph is reassigned to the NEEMO underwater mission in the Florida Keys with Nadia, Aziz, and Captain Tom. During a saturation dive in a storm, a shark attacks the crew and mauls Nadia.
Steph swims at the shark and stabs it in the eye with a metal rattle pointer. Nadia survives; Steph’s own leg is catastrophically injured.
While recovering in a Miami hospital, Steph learns Hannah has suffered a fatal heart attack in Tahlequah. She flies to Oklahoma and joins Kayla and Felicia as life support is withdrawn.
After the funeral, Steph writes a letter of closure and apology to Della, now a marine biology professor at Haskell Indian Nations University who is co-parenting an adopted Potawatomi and Kickapoo boy with Sam Sherman. Steph also reconciles with Kayla.
Steph and Nadia heal, remain close friends, and are eventually assigned to active missions on the International Space Station. Ten years later Steph flies to the Moon under the Artemis program.
From orbit she looks down at the foothills of the Ozarks near Tahlequah, where Kayla has left the kitchen light on for her. In the novel’s closing image, Steph is at peace with her place in the universe.
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What Drives the Story
| Theme | How the book presents it |
|---|---|
| Space as escape from trauma | Steph turns to astronomy, physics, and extreme training environments — rock climbing, a Mars habitat, an underwater hab — after fleeing an abusive household as a child. |
| Indigenous identity and sovereignty | Kayla immerses herself in Cherokee arts and Hawaiian land protection, Della navigates ICWA, adoption, and blood quantum, and Steph resists being defined only by tribal identity. |
| Intergenerational trauma and healing | Hannah’s flight from Texas and her silence about the past surface gradually among Hannah, Steph, Kayla, and Felicia. |
| Queer love and self-acceptance | Steph’s relationships with Meredith, Della, the Berkeley physicist, and Nadia run alongside Della’s effort to reconcile her attraction to women with her LDS upbringing. |
| Isolation versus community (gadugi) | Steph’s solitary drive for individual achievement meets the Cherokee principle of working for the collective good in research habitats and activist encampments. |
Who Is To the Moon and Back For?
Readers of contemporary literary fiction and Indigenous fiction are the primary audience. The novel suits those who follow family sagas that move across decades and multiple points of view.
It also fits readers interested in spaceflight and astronaut training, since long stretches cover Space Camp, scuba and skydiving qualifications, a simulated Mars habitat, and an underwater research mission.
Those drawn to campus settings, ICWA law, and Indigenous activism will find substantial material. The narrative uses a chronological, episodic structure with interleaved emails, blog posts, dating profiles, and habitat logs.
Because the book includes domestic violence, infidelity, a shark attack, and a parent’s death, readers sensitive to those subjects may want to check content notes first.
Quotes from To the Moon and Back
“This is the best that I could do.” — Hannah Harper to Steph
“There are more important things than you being an astronaut. Or you going to some Ivy League school. Or you just deciding for yourself who has to like you, and then being super weird when they don’t fall in line.” — Meredith to Steph
“You’re an Ericson, sweetie.” — Simon and Josephine Ericson to Della
“If you really think we could be something, I need you to say something about me that’s not to get you to some finish line.” — Della Ericson to Steph Harper
“Scientists are just people, Steph. That’s all we are.” — Nadia to Steph Harper
“I want to love the universe, even if I don’t know what it is. I do not have to know what it is.” — Steph Harper
“My sister had promised to leave the light on.” — Steph Harper, gazing down at Earth from space
Books Like To the Moon and Back
There There by Tommy Orange — A multi-perspective novel about urban Native identity, intergenerational trauma, and community.
The Round House by Louise Erdrich — A coming-of-age story centered on a Native family, a violent crime, and tribal jurisdiction.
Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich — Follows a pregnant Ojibwe woman navigating adoption, identity, and institutional pressure.
The Overstory by Richard Powers — A sweeping narrative that combines deep scientific focus with activism and long-range human connections.
The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo — A multigenerational family saga about sisters, parental secrets, and domestic life.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel — Links human connection, art, and memory against a backdrop of existential upheaval.
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Book Snapshot
- Genre & Subgenre: Contemporary Literary Fiction / Indigenous Fiction / Coming-of-Age / Family Saga
- Core Narrative Tropes: Small-town escape, ambition versus domestic duty, secret romance, found family, academic obsession, multigenerational saga, modern media elements (blog posts, Tinder profiles, emails, habitat logs)
- Tone & Atmosphere: Introspective, lyrical, emotionally intense, scientific, atmospheric
- Primary Conflict: Steph’s struggle between her ambition to reach outer space and her unresolved family trauma, cultural identity, and capacity for intimacy
- Pacing Style: Multi-decadal episodic narrative spanning 1987 into the 2020s, moving through childhood, high school, college, graduate school, fellowships, astronaut candidate simulations, and spaceflight
- Book Structure: 8 chronological parts (Part One: 1995–2000; Part Two: 2000–2004; Part Three: 2005–2015; Parts Four–Eight: 2016–2017) plus an unnumbered epilogue titled “Ten Years Later,” with 56 named chapter or section headers
- Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
- Publication Date: November 3, 2026
- ISBN-10: 166806586X
- ISBN-13: 978-1668065860
- Print Length: 464 pages
- Language: English
- Short Author Background: Eliana Ramage is the author of To the Moon and Back, published by Avid Reader Press. The novel is her literary fiction debut and centers on Cherokee characters across several generations.
