Book Description
This is the story of a woman and a marriage, both so
famous the world over, we think we know everything there is
to know. But Hillary's Choice renders America's First
Lady fully human for the first time.
Gail Sheehy uncovers the lifelong imprint of Hillary's
drillmaster father and the frustrated mother who taught her
to bottle up her emotions and who took subversive pleasure in
teaching her only daughter how to fight like a man. We listen
in as Hillary describes, in letters to a college pen pal, her
dreams of becoming a star and her depression when trying to
choose an identity. And we meet her first love, the handsome
Georgetown man who melted her midwestern puritanism but lost
her to the more ambitious Bill Clinton.
We see the arc of Hillary's life through her headstrong
choices: as a Yale Law School graduate who chooses to marry
an Arkansas boy, thinking she will get him elected to
Con-gress and take him back to Washington; as a professional
wife who chooses to abandon her own career dream so she can
raise a "boy" to be a president; as a woman
betrayed once too often who finally confronts her husband and
makes the deal that will determine their future.
Sheehy has been observing Hillary Clinton for seven years,
talking to her informally and writing about her in Vanity
Fair. The biographical portrait that emerges is a tour de
force of hard reporting shaped by the intimate contour of the
author's unique insights.
The story of the Clinton presidency has always been the story
of the Clinton marriage. Delving deep into a relationship
that is both supportive and destructive, Sheehy answers the
constantly asked question "Why does she stay with
him?" How has Hillary preserved her spirit through
repeated cycles of Clinton's seduction, betrayal, and
repentance? Sheehy peels back the layers of public masks and
private denials, showing through one vivid scene after
another how Hillary became addicted to Bill, and how
desperately Bill depended on Hillary to teach him how to
fight and to bring him back again and again from the
political dead. Power and shame shift violently from Hillary
to Bill and back again as Sheehy deconstructs their embattled
co-presidency.
Hillary's Choice reveals much more: the one serious
threat to the Clinton marriage, when Bill fell in love with a
woman unlike any of his others; Hillary's symbiotic
relationship with political guru Dick Morris; the real reason
Clinton couldn't help Hillary pass health care reform; the
source of Hillary's crippling hostility toward the press; how
Hillary escaped the snare of Ken Starr; how she endured, and
capitalized on, the miseries of the Monica year; why she
polarizes women; and why she chose to seek her own political
voice.
Hillary's Choice brings this tempestuous tale up to
date, following Hillary's rebirth as a newly confident woman
in her "Flaming Fifties" who is ready to take
control of her life. The Clintons' startling role reversal in
middle life maintains the suspense: Will Hillary succeed as a
retail politician with Bill in the wings as her strategist?
Will their marriage survive his postpresidential blues and
her possible rejection by her new neighbors in New York?
Gail Sheehy's saturation reporting and candid interviews with
hundreds of people--many of them fresh sources with intimate
knowledge of Hillary--flesh out the complexities and
contradictions that drive one of the most extraordinary
political figures of our time.
