99 Jobs: Blood, Sweat, and Houses

Kirkus Review selection as "Best Books of 2014," "Best Memoir," and "Best Off-the-Beaten-Track."

Indie Discovery Award Winner! "Best Nonfiction Book of 2014"

A carpenter can fix the house. But how do you fix a broken home? In this award-winning memoir, author and contractor Joe Cottonwood recalls a lifetime making repairs. With each job, he enters somebody's private world, revealing a life. Or changing it. Everybody needs a little help, a little warmth: the blonde in the hot tub--the dying billionaire--the wounded war vet--the rebel teen-- the lonely French teacher--and the author himself.

Here's good hard work -- and some bad work, too. Learn the taste of sewage, the jolt of a live wire. Drive to the emergency clinic with a wooden stake through your hand. Feel the satisfaction of work that is honest, simple, strong--sometimes perfect.

"A house is alive. It breathes. It expands and contracts. It ages. Sometimes it falls sick, and then I'm a doctor of houses. I probe intimate cavities. I study the bones, the nerves, the flesh of an old house where generations of remodels have built upon themselves. The structure tells a story: tragedy, comedy, or heartwarming family drama as day-to-day life slowly, inexorably leaves an imprint over the attic, on the walls, under the sink--or in the crawlspace."
--From 99 Jobs

Ninety-nine stories that are gritty, funny, wise. And always deeply humane.