American Wife

Alice Lindgren grows from a quiet Wisconsin childhood into a librarian, wife, mother, and eventually the First Lady of the United States. Her marriage to Charlie Blackwell joins affection and private compromise with a political world that often conflicts with her own convictions. Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel, loosely inspired by Laura Bush, explores grief, class, faith, marriage, ambition, and the moral distance between an individual life and the public identity created around it.