On what might become one of the most significant days in her husband’s presidency, Alice Blackwell considers the strange and unlikely path that has led her to the White House–and the repercussions of a life lived, as she puts it, “almost in opposition to itself.”

A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice learned the virtues of politeness early on from her stolid parents and small Wisconsin hometown. But a tragic accident when she was seventeen shattered her identity and made her understand the fragility of life and the tenuousness of luck. So more than a decade later, when she met boisterous, charismatic Charlie Blackwell, she hardly gave him a second look: She was serious and thoughtful, and he would rather crack a joke than offer a real insight; he was the wealthy son of a bastion family of the Republican party, and she was a school librarian and registered Democrat. Comfortable in her quiet and unassuming life, she felt inured to his charms. And then, much to her surprise, Alice fell for Charlie.

As Alice learns to make her way amid the clannish energy and smug confidence of the Blackwell family, navigating the strange rituals of their country club and summer estate, she remains uneasy with her newfound good fortune. And when Charlie eventually becomes President, Alice is thrust into a position she did not seek–one of power and influence, privilege and responsibility. As Charlie’s tumultuous and controversial second term in the White House wears on, Alice must face contradictions years in the making: How can she both love and fundamentally disagree with her husband? How complicit has she been in the trajectory of her own life? What should she do when her private beliefs run against her public persona?

In Alice Blackwell, New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is a gorgeously written novel that weaves class, wealth, race, and the exigencies of fate into a brilliant tapestry–a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.


Praise for American Wife

“Curtis Sittenfeld is an amazing writer, and American Wife is a brave and moving novel about the intersection of private and public life in America. Ambitious and humble at the same time, Sittenfeld refuses to trivialize or simplify people, whether real or imagined.”
–Richard Russo

“What a remarkable (and brave) thing: a compassionate, illuminating, and beautifully rendered portrait of a fictional Republican first lady with a life and husband very much like our actual Republican first lady’s. Curtis Sittenfeld has written a novel as impressive as it is improbable.”
–Kurt Andersen


From the Hardcover edition.

PART I
1272 Amity Lane  

In 1954, the summer before I entered third grade, my grandmother mistook Andrew Imhof for a girl. I'd accompanied my grandmother to the grocery store--that morning, while reading a novel that mentioned hearts of palm, she'd been seized by a desire to have some herself and had taken me along on the walk to town--and it was in the canned-goods section that we encountered Andrew, who was with his mother. Not being of the same generation, Andrew's mother and my grandmother weren't friends, but they knew each other the way people in Riley, Wisconsin, did. Andrew's mother was the one who approached us, setting her hand against her chest and saying to my grandmother, "Mrs. Lindgren, it's Florence Imhof. How are you?"

Andrew and I had been classmates for as long as we'd been going to school, but we merely eyed each other without speaking. We both were eight. As the adults chatted, he picked up a can of peas and held it by securing it between his flat palm and his chin, and I wondered if he was showing off.

This was when my grandmother shoved me a little. "Alice, say hello to Mrs. Imhof." As I'd been taught, I extended my hand. "And isn't your daughter darling," my grandmother continued, gesturing toward Andrew, "but I don't believe I know her name."

A silence ensued during which I'm pretty sure Mrs. Imhof was deciding how to correct my grandmother. At last, touching her son's shoulder, Mrs. Imhof said, "This is Andrew. He and Alice are in the same class over at the school."

My grandmother squinted. "Andrew, did you say?" She even turned her head, angling her ear as if she were hard of hearing, though I knew she wasn't. She seemed to willfully refuse the pardon Mrs. Imhof had offered, and I wanted to tap my grandmother's arm, to tug her over so her face was next to mine and say, "Granny, he's a boy!" It had never occurred to me that Andrew looked like a girl--little about Andrew Imhof had occurred to me at that time in my life--but it was true that he had unusually long eyelashes framing hazel eyes, as well as light brown hair that had gotten a bit shaggy over the summer. However, his hair was long only for that time and for a boy; it was still far shorter than mine, and there was nothing feminine about the chinos or red-and-white-checked shirt he wore.

"Andrew is the younger of our two sons," Mrs. Imhof said, and her voice contained a new briskness, the first hint of irritation. "His older brother is Pete."

"Is that right?" My grandmother finally appeared to grasp the situation, but grasping it did not seem to have made her repentant. She leaned forward and nodded at Andrew--he still was holding the peas--and said, "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. You be sure my granddaughter behaves herself at school. You can report back to me if she doesn't."

Andrew had said nothing thus far--it was not clear he'd been paying enough attention to the conversation to understand that his gender was in dispute--but at this he beamed: a closed-mouth but enormous smile, one that I felt implied, erroneously, that I was some sort of mischief-maker and he would indeed be keeping his eye on me. My grandmother, who harbored a lifelong admiration for mischief, smiled back at him like a conspirator. After she and Mrs. Imhof said goodbye to each other (our search for hearts of palm had, to my grandmother's disappointment if not her surprise, proved unsuccessful), we turned in the opposite direction from them. I took my grandmother's hand and whispered to her in what I hoped was a chastening tone, "Granny."

Not in a whisper at all, my grandmother said, "You don't think that child looks like a girl?...

 

It's hard to picture anyone but George and Laura Bush in Charlie and Alice, but if listeners can get past the "eeuw" factor, Sittenfeld writes an absorbing account of a liberal, thoughtful young woman who falls for a privileged, charismatic buffoon. Kimberly Farr's voice is cultured and charming as Alice Lindgren tells of her journey from well-read Wisconsin high school girl to school librarian to the out-of-place young woman Charlie Blackwell takes home, and, finally, to wife, mother, and first lady. Farr adds sharp humor to Alice's vision of the smug and self-congratulatory Blackwells, and her dialogue sequences are realistic, funny, and uncomfortably accurate. The story slips off track when Sittenfeld strays too far from fiction. Then, even with Farr's superb reading, the insider insights just feel creepy. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

 

USA Today...

"Sittenfeld boldly imagines the inner life of a first lady...an intimate and daring story...American Wife is a vicarious experience, an up-close portrait of the interior life of a very complicated woman...cinematic."

 

New Yorker...

"The novel, Sittenfeld's most fully realized yet, artfully evokes the painful reverberations of the past."

 

Time Out New York...

"Compelling...enormously sympathetic...Sittenfeld's remarkable gifts as a storyteller draw you back into the fictional world of Alice Blackwell. She writes in the sharp, realistic tradition of Philip Roth and Richard Ford--clear, unpretentious prose; metaphors so spot-on you barely notice them. Sittenfeld may have lifted the set pieces from a real woman's life, but in the process she has created a wise and insightful character who is entirely her own."

 

Washington Post...

"Ambitious...Sittenfeld installs herself deep within the psyche of the tight-lipped wife of the president and emerges with an evenhanded, compassionate look at her mind and heart...powerfully intimate. Grade: A"

 

Radar...

"A masterful highbrow-lowbrow mash-up that satisfies as ass-kicking literary fiction
and juicy gossip simultaneously."

 

"With American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld has deftly crossed an extraordinarily high wire...I read American Wife in just two or three delicious sittings, struck by the granular clarity of the author's descriptions and the down-to-earth believability of the story, bewitched by the charming, frustrating woman at the center of it: Laura Bush."

 

St Petersburg Times...

"Curtis Sittenfeld is one of our best contemporary chroniclers of class and caste... Sittenfeld imagines this couple so deliciously and so plausibly... Curtis Sittenfeld invents a deep, messy, sympathetic life for a public person whose surface is all we'll ever know."

 

Cleveland Plain Dealer...

"Immensely readable. It's a nuanced portrait of a woman in a singularly fascinating position."

 

Portland Oregonian...

"A broad, deep and utterly convincing account...a portrait of a woman and a marriage that also brings the reader as close to the probable essence of the outgoing president as any other novelist, or any biographer, is likely to get."

 

Boston Magazine...

"We love Sittenfeld. We love her wry, razor-sharp observations. We love her funny, straightforward honesty...[American Wife] is an empathetic, fascinating, and gorgeously written story about a 30-year marriage. We devoured it in one night."

 

Fredericksburg Freelance Star...

"Endearing and poignant, humorous and enlightening, American Wife is a must-read for Sittenfeld fans--and a good first read for would-be converts."

 

St Louis Post Dispatch...

"An entertaining, racy tale that's inspired more than a bit by the life of our current president's wife, Laura Bush...A well-told tale that will leave many readers wondering: How much of Sittenfeld's story might be closer to fact than fiction?"

 

LA Times...

"The scope and detail of American Wife are reminiscent of Richard Russo. Like Russo, she creates characters from the ground up, ancestry, neighborhood, culture and all."

 

"American Wife  promises to be another sensation."

 

BookPage ...

"American Wife is a sparkling, sprawling novel...A ridiculously gifted writer...Sittenfeld has harnessed her talents perfectly in American Wife, producing an exhilirating epic infused with humor, pain, and hope."

 

New York Sun ...

"Widely anticipated and vastly entertaining... An intelligent, well-crafted, psychologically astute novel"

 

Seattle Times...

"Highly engaging...fascinating depth."

 

Boston Globe...

"A well-researched, juicy roman a clef about the current first lady."

 

Good Housekeeping...

"With her first line - "Have I made terrible mistakes?" - Alice Blackwell (a fictional First Lady modeled after Laura Bush) reels us into a gripping epic of public and private lives. A gem."

 

"This searing page-turner will make you wonder what unspoken promises lie behind the victory smiles of any power couple."