NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the author of American Wife and
Eligible . . . He proposed. She said no. And it changed her life
forever.
"A deviously clever what if."--O: The Oprah Magazine
"Immersive, escapist."--Good Morning America
"Ingenious."--The New York Times
**NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker - NPR -
The Washington Post - Marie Claire - Cosmopolitan (UK) - Town &
Country - New York Post
**
In 1971, Hillary Rodham is a young woman full of promise: Life
magazine has covered her Wellesley commencement speech, she's attending
Yale Law School, and she's on the forefront of student activism and the
women's rights movement. And then she meets Bill Clinton. A handsome,
charismatic southerner and fellow law student, Bill is already planning
his political career. In each other, the two find a profound
intellectual, emotional, and physical connection that neither has
previously experienced.
In the real world, Hillary followed Bill back to Arkansas, and he
proposed several times; although she said no more than once, as we all
know, she eventually accepted and became Hillary Clinton.
But in Curtis Sittenfeld's powerfully imagined tour-de-force of fiction,
Hillary takes a different road. Feeling doubt about the prospective
marriage, she endures their devastating breakup and leaves Arkansas.
Over the next four decades, she blazes her own trail--one that unfolds
in public as well as in private, that involves crossing paths again (and
again) with Bill Clinton, that raises questions about the tradeoffs all
of us must make in building a life.
Brilliantly weaving a riveting fictional tale into actual historical
events, Curtis Sittenfeld delivers an uncannily astute and witty story
for our times. In exploring the loneliness, moral ambivalence, and iron
determination that characterize the quest for political power, as well
as both the exhilaration and painful compromises demanded of female
ambition in a world still run mostly by men, Rodham is a singular and
unforgettable novel.
