[3] Born and raised in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, Mitchard's father was a plumber, from Newfoundland, Canada, and her mother a hardware store clerk, a competitive horsewoman, and a member of the Lac du Flambeau Chippewa Cree tribe.
Mitchard is a contributing editor for More (magazine) and is featured regularly in Reader's Digest, Good Housekeeping, Hallmark, Real Simple and other publications.
Mitchard married Dan Allegretti, a reporter for The Capital Times, and the couple had three children (Robert, Daniel, and Martin).
[4][5][6] After the death of Allegretti, while working freelance for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a part-time public relations position at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she started writing her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean.
[7] She is an alum and distinguished fellow of the Ragdale Foundation, an artist's colony in Lake Forest, Illinois, where she went to write the first two chapters on the encouragement of author Jane Hamilton.
[11] In 2011, Mitchard wrote that she and her husband had lost millions of dollars and most of their possessions to investment advisor Trevor Cook,[12] who was convicted of operating a Ponzi Scheme.