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.
