Katie Macmillan
My Books
Running Home
Running Home follows the life of Margaret - a wife and mother, sister and daughter. She lives in Minnesota with her college sweetheart and their two kids: Jackson and Izzy. Her blissfully ordinary life is filled with t-ball practices, dance recitals, and bonfires with friends and families. From the outside looking in, she has the perfect life.
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But everything about Margaret’s “perfect” life gets flipped upside down unexpectedly one summer day. She can’t bear the anger and sadness this new world contains, so she buries herself in books, running away from the grief of her new reality and finding solace in the escapism her books provide.
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On the anniversary of this life-altering event, Margaret decides to fly to Hawaii as a way to further blanket herself from reality. But while there, her plans of doing nothing but reading on the beach and drinking cocktails are overturned when adventure-loving Will shows up, pushing her to put the books down and experience the island.
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Her story is told in alternating chapters of past and present. In the past, we watch her blissfully ordinary life as it gets flipped upside down, and in the present, we see how she’s coping with her new life after this tragic event. Running Home is a story of life and loss, grief and joy. It’s about trying to find yourself when life doesn’t go as planned. But mostly, it’s about learning to live again after insurmountable pain.
Published: May 22, 2023
Available in paperback, hardcover, and eBook formats on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.
A Pocketful of Yesterdays
As a park ranger in the Minnesota wilderness, Joshua spends his days trekking around the headwaters of the Mississippi, the peace and solitude of nature his sanctuary. But no amount of time in the wild outdoors could have prepared him for the wild adventure of being a single parent to his teenage daughter and young son.
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After losing his wife, Olive, to cancer, Joshua must learn how to raise his children on his own, helping them heal their broken hearts - and his own - along the way.
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Mia, having just started her freshman year of high school, struggles to simultaneously navigate the new world of life without her mother and life in the wilderness of high school.
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Told in alternative chapters of Joshua and Mia, A Pocketful of Yesterdays teaches us that when life seems dark, the people in our lives are there to shine a light.
Current Stage: First Draft
Melissa, a la Carte
With her big 50th birthday just a couple months away, Melissa assumes her husband’s recent unusual, sneaky behavior has to do with planning her a big surprise party. So when he sits her down to tell her he is leaving her for the 26 year old woman he’s been having an affair with, she’s left feeling breathless, heartbroken, and damaged.
Thankfully Melissa’s best friend, Penny, is her rock and saving grace through it all. And for Melissa’s birthday, Penny gifts her a couple’s cooking class - for Penny and Melissa to do together. The girls have a blast cooking together, with Melissa really finding she has a passion (and knack) for fresh, “real” cooking that she didn’t know she had. She continues the classes, advancing through the different levels (and stirring up some romance along the way), and decides to enter in a statewide cooking contest.
Throughout the novel, Melissa navigates divorce, single parenthood, middle-aged discovery of oneself, the true strength of true friendship, and learning to find love after heartache.