Jacquelyn Mitchard Books In Order

Publication Order of Cappadora Family Books

Publication Order of Midnight Twins Books

Publication Order of What We Saw at Night Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Picture Books

Publication Order of Children's Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Jacquelyn Mitchard, a popular American journalist and fiction writer nowadays, was born on the outskirts of Chicago, Illinois. She was raised in the family of a plumber and a clerk of a hardware store. When Jacquelyn was a teenage girl, she sensed that she has an inclination for writing. Then, she enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, where she had a possibility to study for whole three semesters under the teaching of Mark Costello, who wrote the famous work The Murphy Stories.

After the graduation, Jacquelyn Mitchard became a reporter at the local newspaper. She wrote a huge number of columns and articles for various magazines and newspapers (such as More or the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). When she was a reporter, she married her first husband, Dan Allegretti, who was also a reporter in another newspaper and with whom she had three sons. Her husband, however, had also a daughter from the previous marriage.

Subsequently, Dan Allegretti died of cancer when he turned 45, and Jacquelyn became a widow after thirteen years of marriage with him. It was a terribly difficult time for Jacquelyn: she had frequent quarrels with her older son who blamed her for the death of his father as well as for other things, and financial problems forced her to work as a freelancer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and occupy a position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. However, Jacquelyn found a distraction from all the woes in writing her first novel, which was going to become a bestseller soon.

When the novel was published under the name “The Deep End of the Ocean”, it had a tremendous success! Moreover, the novel was so popular (by May 1998 the number of copies reached 3,000,000) that there was produced a film on the basis of it, where starred Treat Williams and Michelle Pfeifer.

Although the newborn writer started to write the second novel before the first one was published, she had some apprehensions after “The Deep End of the Ocean” became a bestseller. Jacquelyn had to overcome many obstacles and fears in order to continue writing novels with a belief that the next work will be even better; many authors whose first works were startlingly successful have an obtrusive fear that the next novel will not meet the expectations of readers. Jacquelyn Mitchard had such a fear as well.

Even though Jacquelyn Mitchard has become a prominent, notable writer, she had a drama in her personal life as well. Not to mention her first husband who died from cancer, she had a long-standing conflict with her older son, who constantly hated his family. In her column “How I grew to hate my son” in the Daily Mail, she revealed all the details of this sad story. At the end, she forced her son to get out of the house and felt a long-wished-for relief after it, which, as she said, was even more shocking. Yet, this story had a happy end as well: her son returned home and seemed to be a completely different person than whom she had known before.

Apart from her excellent writing skills that she has acquired during the many years of working as a journalist, she is also a highly versatile writer: she has written a number of books for adults, young adults and even children. Many of her novels, not just “The Deep End of the Ocean,” have been bestselling, and now Jacquelyn Mitchard lives in Massachusetts with Christopher Brent, her second husband. Her husband is an artist-carpenter, and the family lives with eight children.

Her renowned bestselling novel “The Deep End in the Ocean” portrays a drama of the typical middle-class family. Beth Cappadora, a mother of three children, a housewife and a photographer, leaves the youngest son with his older brother in a hotel hall with lots of people while she goes away for a while. Yet, in a matter of seconds Ben, the youngest son, lets the hand of his brother out and disappears. After getting to know that the boy was lost, Beth falls into a severe depression, while her husband insists that she must look after the remaining two kids, a tiny baby daughter Kerry and the 7-year-old boy Vincent.

One day, a boy named Sam comes to the house of Beth and asks her to mow the lawn. She recognizes that he is her son Ben and lets him to mow the lawn while using this opportunity to take a few photos of him. Later, they decide with her husband to turn to a private detective. The private detective found out that Ben was kidnapped in the hotel hall by a woman, who renamed him and raised him as her own kid. She ended up in a mental hospital, and Ben was raised by a man who adopted him and lived just two blocks away the boy’s real family.

His adoptive father is a Greek-American who has raised him for nine years, while the real family of Ben has Italian roots. At the end, the father agrees to give him up to his real family. The story uncovers the psychological suffering of the boy, who is torn between the two worlds. He belongs to both families and to none of them at the same time. Ben tells his mother that he has suicidal thoughts and returns back to the adoptive father. At the end of the novel, almost nothing is resolved. The most of the problems remain, and the psychological suffering of both brothers will influence them during a large share of their lives.

Another bestselling work of Jacquelyn Mitchard is her famous novel “Cage of Stars”. Three sisters are playing hide-and-seek, and Ronnie, one of the sisters, is waiting until others will call her. After she heard nothing for a while, she steps out and sees her sisters dead in a puddle of blood. The man who killed the girls, Scott Early, is undisturbedly sitting at a table for picnics, while Ronnie is running home to call the police.

Several weeks later, the court ruled that the man is mentally it and sentenced him to a mental hospital. The family is angry with the sentence, as well as Ronnie, but the parents decide to forgive a man in order to heal themselves. Besides, they recently got another baby, a boy with the name Raphael. Ronnie is enraged about such a decision. She decides to go San Diego. Even though she told her parents the reason for going there is studying (and it is really so), she also has intentions to kill the one who slaughtered her poor sisters…

Jacquelyn Mitchard is a prominent writer and a very keen psychologist. Every her novel hooks you and does not let you to be released until you will finish reading. In addition to the already mentioned works, there are also other exciting works that will not leave the readers unimpressed (such as “A Theory of Relativity” and “Christmas, Present”). Jacquelyn Mitchard always knows how to find a key to your attention.