Marylee MacDonald is the author of Surrender, a memoir about growing up adopted and the surrender of her first-born child.  While raising her other four children, she worked as a carpenter and co-owner of Working Women Construction and as a freelance editor for Old-House Journal, Sunset, and Better Homes & Gardens. When her youngest graduated from college, she was able to quit her day job and write full time. Her short stories have won the Barry Hannah Prize, the American Literary Review Fiction Prize, the Jeanne M. Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award, the Matt Clark Prize, and the Ron Rash Award. Her novel, Montpelier Tomorrow, won a Gold Medal for Drama from Readers’ Favorites International Book Awards, and Surrender was a winner in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards. In her free time, she loves to visit historic sites, do detective work in European archives, and spend time with her family.