"American Wife" by Curtis Sittenfeld

A review from reader Nancy Duncan:

Alice Lindgren is from a small town in Wisconsin where she lives with her parents and grandmother in the 1950s. She has no illusions of grandeur, she believes her life will follow the path of her parents, but a series of events in her teenage years leads her in an unexpected direction.

Loosely based on a biography of Laura Bush, the author attempts to understand why a quiet, bookish librarian would marry such a man as George Bush, or as he is called in the book, Charlie Blackwell.

The book is divided up by the houses Alice lived in. First her parents' house in Riley, Wisconsin; the apartment she lived in as a single, working woman; the governor's mansion in Wisconsin and finally the White House.

The last part of the book is the most introspective. At this point Alice is looking back and wondering what if, what if those events as a teenager hadn't happened, would her life have been so different? What lead her to this point, where she is struggling with the decisions her husband has made as president -- and is she complicit with them in her silence?

Until Laura Bush writes her own biography and gives us insight into the why and how of her decisions, we can read "American Wife" and think we know the answers.