Jacquelyn Mitchard

Jacquelyn Mitchard is an American journalist and author. She is the author of the best-selling novel The Deep End of the Ocean, which was the first selection for Oprah's Book Club, on September 17, 1996. Other books by Mitchard include The Breakdown Lane, Twelve Times Blessed, Christmas, Present, A Theory of Relativity, The Most Wanted, Cage of Stars, No Time to Wave Goodbye, Second Nature - A Love Story, and Still Summer.

She is a professor of creative writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Biography

Born and raised in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, Mitchard's father was a plumber, from Newfoundland, Canada, and her mother a hardware store clerk, a competitive horsewoman, and a member of the Lac du Flambeau Chippewa Cree tribe. She studied creative writing for three semesters under Mark Costello (author of The Murphy Stories) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

After the death of Allegretti, while working freelance for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a part-time public relations position at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she started writing her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean. She is an alum and distinguished fellow of the Ragdale Foundation, an artist's colony in Lake Forest, Illinois, where she went to write the first two chapters on the encouragement of author Jane Hamilton.

Bolstered by being featured by Oprah, the novel sold close to 3 million copies by May 1998. It has been Mitchard's only #1 New York Times Bestseller, on the list for 29 weeks, including 13 weeks at number 1. The book had originally reached number 14, but after being selected by Winfrey, sales jumped.

Personal life

In 2011, Mitchard wrote that she and her husband had lost millions of dollars and most of their possessions to investment advisor Trevor Cook, who was convicted of operating a Ponzi Scheme.