Jacquelyn Mitchard

After surviving life’s ups and downs, best-selling author Jacquelyn Mitchard has found that happiness lies somewhere in between

By Barbara Sanford

Photographed by David King / Hair and makeup by Renee Holzwarth of the Ultimate Spa Salon

I have some bad news. And it’s really bad news.”

It was the summer of 2009, and best-selling author Jacquelyn Mitchard and her husband, Chris, were vacationing on Cape Cod when Mitchard’s longtime assistant, Pam, phoned.

“The money. It’s all gone,” Pam said.

The money was the couple’s life savings, invested with a financial manager hundreds of miles away. They were the funds Mitchard and her husband kept in mind as they prepared for the future—college for their kids, retirement, travel—and the safety net they had woven from years of hard work and milestones of success.

Rewind to a time 15 years ago, when a different type of phone call changed her life. It was 1996 when Oprah Winfrey herself called to say she had chosen Mitchard’s novel, “The Deep End of the Ocean,” as the inaugural selection for what would become the famed Oprah’s Book Club.

That was the moment that sent Mitchard’s career into a whole new stratosphere. Penned as she adjusted to single parenthood after the death of her first husband, the book went on to sell 12 million copies worldwide and was made into a Hollywood feature film.

But on this day, the mood after the phone call was different.

Mitchard was in disbelief. Soon the details trickled in: Mitchard and her husband would find out they were victims of an international Ponzi scheme involving a Minneapolis money manager who would ultimately admit to bilking thousands of investors out of more than $190 million, sending many into a tailspin of financial ruin.

Though the details came, answers wouldn’t. The money was inexplicably and instantly gone. The best-selling author with the emotional success story—from the death of her first husband to Oprah’s call, 17 more books, remarriage, nine children and a recovery from a serious accident—was broke.

It’s been a life of dramatic ups and downs for Mitchard. Through it all, she has continually reinvented herself.

Now, at 56, Mitchard is starting over, once again. 

Ask Mitchard what subjects drive her to write, and you get a simple answer. She writes about ordinary people with ordinary problems, until they come to the point in their lives when the trapdoor opens and they fall down.

“That’s when I come in,” she says. “I want to know what happens after the people who brought the casserole have left, to explore the effect on people’s lives when the unexpected happens, when hail falls out of a blue sky.”

Mitchard was raised near Chicago. The daughter of a plumber and retail clerk, she would become the first person on either side of her family to graduate from high school, let alone college. And, true to her blue-collar upbringing, she has worked every day since she was 17, steadily laying the bricks for the kind of life she always wanted. Until her late 30s, that meant a steady job, kids and a husband. But after every piece was in place, her life took a dramatic turn.

Mitchard was working part time at the University of Wisconsin when her first husband, Dan, a newspaperman in his mid-40s, was diagnosed with colon cancer. His case was terminal. In 1993, Dan died and Mitchard was left with four young kids and no financial security to speak of.

Stumbling through her grief and looking for change, Mitchard decided to take a big risk. She pulled an old idea that had long resided in the back of her mind, and, with no formal training beyond one semester of creative writing in college, sat down to write a novel. She didn’t know where the effort would lead, but in the face of events she never expected to endure, suddenly nothing seemed impossible.

So Mitchard wrote. And wrote. The ultimate result was her novel, “The Deep End of the Ocean.”

“I didn’t know that within a year it would be a big hit,” she says.

While the captivating novel garnered praise from critics, it also caught the attention of Oprah, who chose the novel to be the first selection in her Book Club.

“[That] was an amazing, life-changing experience,” Mitchard says. “At that time everyone underestimated the hunger and thirst people had for reading. [In later years], people wanted to find something wrong with the club—that it was too lowbrow or for suburban housewives. But I can’t think of one bad thing about that experience. It was all good—both for me and for the people involved with it.”

Soon afterward, the hallmarks of literary success began to pour in: multi-book deals with publishers and a Hollywood movie based on her novel. For the first time in her life, Mitchard had plenty.

By the time Mitchard met Chris, the man who would become her second husband, she had adopted three children as a single parent, bringing her brood to seven. How she did it all is a testament to just who she is. She gave love, relished in watching them grow and kept her creative mind at work. As her career grew, she branched into new territory writing teen novels and children’s books along with her highly respected adult novels.

“Being a writer is a difficult life. [It] is hard, emotional and fun work. [Some days] I’d rather break rocks in the hot sun. But I love telling stories and hope I get the chance to keep on doing it,” Mitchard says. “I’ve had a great deal of luck, but I have both kinds, as my brother says.”

As the years rolled past, the couple felt they were living the good life. But then Mitchard’s own trapdoor suddenly opened once again. After finding out about the Ponzi scheme they had unknowingly bought into, Mitchard had become one of those ordinary people she writes about. Hail was falling from a blue sky.

“After Pam’s call, I went through a terrible period,” she says. “I was bitter, stunned, angry at the criminal. [I was] angry at my husband because I believed him and trusted his judgment. But our fraudulent investment advisor didn’t promise [us] 30 percent returns in a four-percent world. If he had, we would have smelled rotten fish. What he did say was that we might lose less in the coming stock market deluge, which made sense. He told every person what they needed to hear and inspired their confidence. And that’s the definition of a good con man.”

Though their investor has been sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay restitution, Mitchard isn’t holding her breath.

“The sad part is that there is no recovery, no happy ending,” she continues. “I need to change the ending to this story.”

One change began immediately; The same week they learned their savings was gone, Mitchard and Chris forged ahead with the adoption of two Ethiopian girls they’d previously planned on.

“I could have gone back on the adoption,” says Mitchard. “No one would have blamed us.”

The rest of their personal recovery, both emotionally and financially, is coming slowly. Mitchard and her husband began working on rebuilding their trust with each other and those around them.

“When we found out we’d lost the money, Chris and I avoided each other,” she says honestly. “Now we’re trying to be kind. We’re each suffering in our own way, but our marriage is closer than it’s ever been before. I’ve turned the corner from absolute misery and hopelessness to some measure of belief in a way to survive. That in itself is a gift.”

Though their financial security is gone, Mitchard knows that if she recovered once before, she can do it again. It’s a perspective that comes from a life of ups and downs.

 “When I look at the things that others have weathered,” she
explains, “I’m thankful that it’s just stolen money and not [something like] a child dying. I try to begin each day gratefully and not expect much. I’m happy with a good cup of coffee.”

Though it’s easy to spend time looking back, Mitchard is focusing on each day ahead.

“It’s not a final chapter here yet,” she adds. “This tragedy could have happened to anyone. You think you’re set for life, but then you’re not. [So], I decided that I want to be a teacher and pass on what I’ve learned to others.”

As if she hasn’t accomplished enough, Mitchard is heading back to school this summer to begin working toward a master of fine arts in creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University.

In addition to her workload as a degree-seeking student, she will be a teaching fellow for four semesters while also receiving teaching lessons from her supervising professor.

“Returning to school at my age has its challenges,” she says. “It will be a great deal of work, but it should also be fun. Everyone at the university is very supportive of me, and they specially created this program so that I could do this.”

The low-residency MFA only requires her to be on campus 20 days per year so that she can spend time with her kids. The coursework will primarily be accomplished remotely. She is also an adjunct faculty member at Fairfield University in Connecticut. Building on this momentum, Mitchard hopes to find a permanent teaching job after earning her degree.

Of course, she’s also got that writing gig that keeps her plenty busy. She has a new novel, “Second Nature: A Love Story,” coming out next month and has also recently penned articles for several national magazines. 

As she forges ahead finding new roles for herself, her family is adjusting as well. Her husband has found new work with a property management company. Her older kids are working at their own jobs and her younger children are adjusting to the new realities of their financial situation. They even have ideas on new projects she can tackle.

“They think I should just write the next ‘Harry Potter,’” Mitchard says. “Why didn’t I think of that?” she adds with a laugh.

While her career continues to evolve and the hallways of her home just outside of Madison grow loud with laughter, she has come to appreciate the beauty of a quieter life.

“I love being with my kids, dancing to Aretha Franklin in the kitchen. I treasure non-material things much more. I always did, but now my friends, my relationships with them and my readers—they’re my very breath,” she says. “All that really matters are relationships between people. They are the only things that endure.”

She pauses.

“It wasn’t worth the price I paid to learn this,” she adds with her trademark wit. “I could have learned this from a really good book!”

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