This two-part book chronicles the stories of 20 women who built houses--for themselves by hand or for others as designers or architects. It is based on interviews by the author with the women and others over a 5-year period. The first part of the book documents the projects and careers of the women interviewed. It explores their backgrounds and what led them to house building, their various design processes, and their feelings after actually building or designing a house. It describes the buildings the women have built or designed, their attitudes about their work, and the design elements that intrigue them. The houses range from elegant, employing state-of-the-art technology, to extremely modest, humble cabins built with salvaged materials. In the second part, the author, who has built a house for herself, presents her viewpoint and shares what these building endeavors mean to women, combining comments from the women profiled in the first part of the book with her own experiences and observations. (KC)