About this item
Some women are born with an instinct for knowing how things work -and what to do when they break. Caroline MacAfee is a skilled carpenter, her daughter Jamie, a talented architect. Together they are the faces of Gut It!, a home renovation series on local public television. Caroline takes pride in her work, and in the way she connects with the show's audience. But when she is told the network wants her daughter to replace her as host-the day after Caroline's fifty-sixth birthday-she is devastated. The fallout couldn't come at a worse time. For Jamie, life changes overnight when, soon after learning of the host shift, her father and his new wife die in a car accident that orphans their two-year-old son. Accustomed to organization and planning, she is now grappling with a toddler who misses his parents, a fianc who doesn't want the child, a staggering new attraction, and a work challenge that, if botched, could undermine the future of both MacAfee Homes and Gut It!For Caroline, hosting Gut It! is part of her identity.
About the Author
I was born and raised in suburban Boston. My mother's death, when I was eight, was the defining event of a childhood that was otherwise ordinary. I took piano lessons and flute lessons. I took ballroom dancing lessons. I went to summer camp through my fifteenth year (in Maine, which explains the setting of so many of my stories) , then spent my sixteenth summer learning to type and to drive (two skills that have served me better than all of my other high school courses combined) . I earned a B.A. in Psychology at Tufts University and an M.A. in Sociology at Boston College. The motivation behind the M.A. was sheer greed. My husband was just starting law school. We needed the money. Following graduate school, I worked as a researcher with the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and as a photographer and reporter for the Belmont Herald. I did the newspaper work after my first son was born. Since I was heavily into taking pictures of him, I worked for the paper to support that habit. Initially, I wrote only in a secondary capacity, to provide copy for the pictures I took. In time, I realized that I was better at writing than photography. I used both skills doing volunteer work for hospital groups, and have served on the Board of Directors of the Friends of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and on the MGH's Women's Cancer Advisory Board. I became an actual writer by fluke. My twins were four when, by chance, I happened on a newspaper article profiling three female writers. Intrigued, I spent three months researching, plotting, and writing my own book - and it sold. My niche? I write about the emotional crises that we face in our lives. Readers identify with my characters. They know them. They are them. I'm an everyday woman writing about everyday people facing not-so-everyday challenges. My novels are character-driven studies of marriage, parenthood, sibling rivalry, and friendship, and I've been blessed in having readers who buy them eagerly enough to put them on the major bestseller lists. One of my latest, came out in 2013. my second novel with St. Martin's Press, became my 22nd New York Times bestselling novel soon after its release in June 2015. my work in progress, will be published in 2018.2018? Yikes. I didn't think I'd live that long. I thought I'd die of breast cancer back in the 1900's, like my mom. But I didn't. I was diagnosed nearly twenty years ago, had surgery and treatment, and here I am, stronger than ever and loving having authored yet another book, this one the non-fiction First published in 2001, is a handbook of practical tips and upbeat anecdotes that I compiled with the help of 350 breast cancer survivors, their families and friends. These survivors just ... blew me away! They gave me the book that I wish I'd had way back when I was diagnosed. There is no medical information here, nothing frightening, simply pr
