...by Cara Brookins, published by Macmillan in 2017. Definitely non-fiction, a memoir written by a remarkably sturdy woman who had a really rough time in her early adult life. The subtitle is "How a house built a family," and relates the story of how a desperate woman convinced her children they could watch enough YouTube to be able to construct their own house. The back story is one of poor choices: two husbands who were bad guys, one a scary, violent abuser, and the other a psychotic who was in and out of mental hospitals, threatening her, until he went off his meds and killed himself.
She tells the story of building a house with her four children. The older two were in their teens, the youngest a toddler, unable to actually be helpful or work, and needing to be watched carefully at a construction site. Starting from knowing absolutely nothing about construction to standing in front of the completed two story, five bedroom brick house completely finished. She worked as a computer programmer/code writer during the day and they built the house in the evenings and on weekends when they could go to the work site. Literally from the ground up: pouring the slab, laying a gazillion bricks, sawing, hammering, erecting walls, hanging sheet rock and painting. She did most of the plumbing (the guys she hired turned out to be pot-heads, inept and undependable), and as much of the wiring as she could, though some had to be done professionally to meet code and pass inspection.
Really amazing tale of resilience. She had a bank loan to buy the materials, but knew she could not afford to pay labor expenses, so she read books, watched videos and made a lot of mistakes in the learning process. But they built it together. There were times when they were so exhausted trying to meet the deadline for inspection, required by the bank that loaned her the money, they fell asleep in their plates at dinner. And days they were so weary they could hardly move, but they built it.
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