Between Chapters: How I Started Over, Took Some Chances, and Found the Plot

“Bombeckian brevity and wit.” —The New York Times

For anyone in the messy middle—of a marriage, a loss, an emptying house, or a life that no longer fits.

You’re not starting over. You’re between chapters.

In forty short, funny, honest essays, Zibby Owens writes about what happens when the life you carefully built stops looking like the life you thought you’d have—and you have to figure out who you are now.

Over one tumultuous decade, her life comes apart and slowly, surprisingly, comes back together: a divorce that upends her family, a second chance at love, four kids and countless shared-custody handoffs, the death of her stepfather, friendships gained and lost, and the books that carry her through it all.

There’s the birds-and-bees talk that goes spectacularly wrong. The inflatable raft at sleepaway camp she cannot climb. Weight lost and found. A zillion mistakes. And the unglamorous work of becoming someone new when the old script no longer fits.

Read it straight through or one essay at a time—each takes just a few minutes. As Susan Orlean puts it, Between Chapters is “as warm and engaging as morning coffee with a best friend.”

For anyone navigating divorce, grief, an empty nest, reinvention—or simply wondering what comes next.

And for the friend who’s between chapters: when you don’t know what to say, give her this.

Audiobook read by the author.