Mitchard Moving To Massachusetts

10/18/11 – One of Wisconsin’s best-known writers is leaving for Massachusetts. Jacquelyn Mitchard has admitted being the victim of a Ponzi scheme. And she either had to sell her family’s home at Oregon in Dane County, where she’s lived for 35 years, or her writing retreat in Brewster Massachusetts. The house near Oregon sold quickly, while the Massachusetts home had no buyers. So Mitchard and her husband Chris Brent plan to move East in late November. The 56-year-old Mitchard wrote about Wisconsin life for years in a newspaper column in Madison and then Milwaukee. She has also written novels, including the best-seller “The Deep End of the Ocean.” Mitchard has said that she and Brent invested money with Trevor Cook of Minnesota’s suburban Twin Cities. Cook is now serving 25 years in prison for carrying out a 190-million-dollar Ponzi scheme with Brent, Mitchard, and at least a-thousand other victims. The Wisconsin State Journal said the couple was two years behind on its property taxes in Dane County, but the town overbilled the property – and the couple won an appeal. On Thursday night, Mitchard will speak at the Wisconsin Book Festival in Madison – and she’ll have a moving sale at her home on Friday.