Jacquelyn Mitchard was born in Chicago, became a newpaper reporter in 1978 and wrote her first nonfiction book (Mother Less Child: The Love Story of a Family) about infertility and adoption, in 1983. Her first novel (The Deep End of the Ocean) was the inagural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, and she went on to write six more novels, three of them bestsellers. The Deep End of the Ocean was made into a film produced by and starring Michelle Pfeiffer, and her most recent novel, The Breakdown Lane, has been optioned for a Hallmark Halll of Fame movie. She writes a syndicated newspaper column, The Rest of Us, and her blog and podcasts, Dispatches From the Mothership, can be accessed on her website Jacquelynmitchard.com. Mitchard, who lives in the Midwest, with her husband Chris Brent and their seven children, who range in age from infant Atticus to 22-year-old Rob, also worked as a speechwriter for former DHSS Secretary Donna Shalala, as a potato-chip packer and a blackjack dealer. A longtime contributor to Parenting Magazine and anthologized in such diverse publications as Karin Slaughter's Like a Blade, a compilation of suspense stories and Jill Smolowe's A Love Like No Other, a 2005 series of essays on adoption, as well as the upcoming The Literary Bride, she has no hobbies.