Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life

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From the award-winning author The New York Times Book Review called a national treasure, a fascinating, wholly original book about Pat Nixon that is also a fully realized account of fiction, fiction writing, and the fiction writer ( The Boston Globe ).The rare First Lady who did not write a book, Pat Nixon remains one of the most mysterious and enigmatic public figures in recent history. Ann Beattie, like many of her generation, dismissed Richard Nixon s wife. Decades later, she wonders what it must have been like to be married to such a spectacularly ambitious and catastrophically self-destructive man. Beattie uses the elusive persona of Mrs. Nixon to examine how writers create characters, how they use detail, and what drives their storytelling. Like Stephen King s On Writing this fascinating and intimate account offers readers a rare glimpse into the imagination of a writer. A startlingly compelling and revelatory work, Mrs. Nixon is an insightful and humorous examination of the First Couple who occupied the White House as the baby boomers came of age.

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