When Kara Brookins’ second abusive marriage ended, she was emotionally heartbroken. She recovered by building her own house, which she learned from YouTube videos.

When a mother of four had to sell the house she lived in in Bryant, Arkansas, in 2007, she started looking for a new home. However, everything a computer programmer analyst could afford back then was very small. Broken also felt compelled to do something to reunite her family. “But,” she admits, “I have no idea what that should be.”

As a result, Brookins came up with a plan to build her house from scratch. “It felt like someone in our position was doing it,” says Brookins, 45. “Nobody saw it that way, and later I realized it looked crazy.”

Brooks paid $20,000 for a one-acre lot and a construction loan of about $150,000. And I started watching YouTube videos to learn how to lay the foundation, build a wall, lay a gas pipeline, and install plumbing, among other construction techniques.

Her children, ages 2 to 17, helped her build the 3,500-square-foot home over the nine months. Drew, then 15, helped Brookins plan. With no running water on site, 11-year-old Jada used buckets to collect water from a neighbor’s pond, which she mixed with 80-pound bags of concrete to form the foundation slurry.

“It seemed impossible all the time,” recalls Brookins, who worked while the kids were in school. Brookins took her family to the construction site five miles away after school and worked late into the night in the new house.

Back then, YouTube videos were blurry and offered multiple ways to complete the task. For some of the more difficult jobs, Brookins hired a part-time firefighter with construction experience for $25 an hour. “In terms of knowledge, he was one step ahead of us,” she recalls.

Brookins and her children moved into the five-bedroom house on March 31, 2009. She dubbed it Inkwell Manor in honor of her ambition to be a writer.

Brookins has subsequently published many middle grades and young adult novels, as well as a memoir, Rise: How a House Built a Family, which will be released on January 24.

Brookins was able to get out of her funk by building the house. “We were mortified that building our own shelter was our best alternative,” Brookins says. “It wasn’t anything we were really proud of.” It turned out to be the most beneficial thing I could have done for myself.

“If I, a 110-pound computer programmer, can build an entire house,” she asserts, “you can do anything you set your mind to.” “Decide on a single aim and stick to it. Find that large thing you want to do, take tiny steps toward it, and bring along others who need to heal with you on the journey. There’s a lot of power in that.”

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