Rachel Smith

Ryan Smith didn't set out to write a book about mold. He set out to save his wife.

After years of unexplained symptoms — fatigue, gut dysfunction, neurological crashes — Ryan and Rachel Smith moved to Alaska on a doctor's advice, hoping the change would bring healing. Instead, within three months, Rachel was sicker than she'd ever been. A trusted physician connected the dots before anyone ran a single test: "Get out of that house, or it could kill her."

It was mold. Hidden behind a pressure tank, buried in old carpet, invisible to the eye but devastating to Rachel's body. What followed was a long fight through cancer, brain lesions, life-threatening vitamin deficiencies, and a medical system that had no framework for what they were going through.

That fight changed everything.

Ryan spent the next eight years on the other side of the problem — inside Alaskan homes as the founder of Pure Maintenance of Alaska, helping hundreds of families remediate mold contamination using dry fog technology. He saw the same patterns he'd lived: sealed homes, hidden mold, stacked symptoms, and people being told they were fine when they clearly weren't. Their work combines cutting-edge science with deep compassion and a commitment to making hard-to-talk-about issues accessible and empowering.

Rachel brings her own voice to these pages — as the patient, the researcher, and the one who lived it from the inside. Together, they wrote the book they wish had existed when their nightmare began.

Rachel is also the author of over 25 books, including historically based children's stories in large print and dyslexic-friendly font created with homeschooling families in mind, as well as interactive journals and planners for homeschooling moms with chronic illness and kids with sick moms. She has a deep desire to be an encouragement to other families in similar situations, and loves to hear from little readers and moms in need of a listening ear.

Ryan and Rachel live in Alaska with their children and a view of the mountains that keeps them grounded and inspired.