Rodham

Set in an alternate version of recent American history, the novel reimagines the life of Hillary Rodham, narrated in her first-person voice, from her 1969 Wellesley College commencement speech through her inauguration as the first female president of the United States in 2017. The central question is what might have happened if Hillary had not married Bill Clinton.

The story opens with Hillary delivering the first-ever student commencement address at Wellesley, where she extemporaneously rebukes a senator for ignoring civil rights and Vietnam. The speech attracts national media attention, including coverage in Life magazine.

In the fall of 1970, Hillary, a second-year student at Yale Law School, notices Bill Clinton, a charismatic first-year from Arkansas. On their first date, Bill persuades a security guard to let them into a closed art gallery, and they spend hours discussing their families and ambitions. Flashbacks reveal a childhood in Park Ridge, Illinois, shaped by a sarcastic father and a supportive mother, Dorothy. Hillary describes a lifelong pattern in which men enjoy her intellect but do not see her as a romantic partner. Bill upends this pattern: He tells her she is beautiful and kisses her neck for the first time in the gallery courtyard at dusk.

They quickly become inseparable. Hillary describes the relationship as continuously replenishable, their conversations inexhaustible, their physical chemistry unlike anything she has experienced. Bill confides his plan to run for president, potentially as early as 1984. Her mentor Gwen Greenberger, a Black woman who directs the National Children's Initiative at Yale, questions whether Bill seeks office to create change or to make people fall in love with him.

In the summer of 1971, Bill accompanies Hillary to a clerkship in Berkeley, California. Their domestic bliss shatters when Hillary finds Bill passionately kissing Margaret Howard, the college-age daughter of her boss. Bill confesses he has never been faithful to any girlfriend and estimates he has been with more than 50 women, describing his compulsions as akin to alcoholism. Hillary agrees to try to forgive him, reflecting that the discovery of his flaw brought a perverse relief: The catch had made itself known, and if she could live with it, she could keep him.

After Yale, Hillary works for Gwen's organization and joins the House Judiciary Committee's Nixon impeachment inquiry. Bill, now teaching law at the University of Arkansas and running for Congress, proposes marriage at Ennerdale Water in England's Lake District. Hillary declines, saying the combination of marriage and Arkansas feels irrevocable, and suggests they date other people. She moves to Fayetteville to teach law and throws herself into Bill's congressional campaign.

Just before Election Day in 1974, a woman approaches Hillary in a supermarket parking lot and says Bill forced himself on her while she was a campaign volunteer. The woman refuses to give her name. Bill's campaign manager dismisses the accusation. Bill loses the election by 6,000 votes, and Hillary does not tell him about the woman's claim.

Months later, Gwen inadvertently triggers a realization: The woman said Bill kissed her neck, the same way he first kissed Hillary. Back in Fayetteville, Hillary confronts Bill. He denies assault but erupts in rage. They reconcile, and Hillary says she will marry him. That night, however, Bill wakes her: "The thing that's wrong with me is incurable. . . . Us staying together is good for me and bad for you." The next morning, he does not try to stop her from leaving. Hillary drives north, sobbing, identifying five reasons to go when her Rule of Two, a lifelong decision-making framework, required only two.

The novel's second half follows Hillary through 16 years in Chicago. She becomes a tenured law professor at Northwestern and dates intermittently without finding anyone comparable to Bill. She learns he has become engaged to a schoolteacher named Sarah Grace Hebert, devastating news that confirms their breakup is permanent. In 1991, Bill calls to ask Hillary to vouch for his presidential campaign to reporters. She declines. During the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, she develops an intense but physically chaste connection with James, a married colleague. When she tells James she plans to run for the U.S. Senate, he offers to leave his wife. She refuses.

Hillary wins the 1992 Senate race, defeating both the incumbent Alan Dixon and Carol Moseley Braun, a Black woman whose candidacy Gwen had urged Hillary not to oppose. The decision permanently ruptures Hillary's friendship with Gwen. Bill's presidential campaign collapses after a cabaret singer alleges a 12-year affair and his wife Sarah Grace cries on national television during a 60 Minutes interview. James dies by suicide in December 1993 after being accused of misusing university funds, a loss Hillary mourns with lasting regret.

The narrative accelerates through Hillary's subsequent career: a failed 2004 presidential run derailed by an infamous remark about choosing a career over baking cookies, a bruising 2008 primary loss to her fellow Illinois senator Barack Obama, and a 2005 dinner at Bill's San Francisco penthouse that devolves into mutual insults after she propositions him and he declines.

In 2015, Hillary launches her third presidential campaign. Bill enters the Democratic primary, and a chant of "Shut her up!" becomes a fixture at his rallies. Hillary's research team uncovers his post-political life, including attendance at sex parties, an $850,000 sexual harassment settlement, and a rape accusation by a woman now identified as Vivian Tobin, the unnamed woman from the supermarket parking lot decades earlier. Hillary engineers a meeting with Donald Trump, hoping he will serve as a spoiler against Bill. Trump declines to run but appoints himself Hillary's surrogate, issuing crude tweets that improve her polling among white voters while alienating her progressive base.

A scandal erupts when a former campaign aide, Jill Perkins, accuses Hillary on national television of forcing Perkins to shave Hillary's legs in a taxi during the 1992 race. The incident has a grain of truth: Hillary's communications director, Greg Rheinfrank, had suggested it, and Perkins had complied. At the first Democratic debate, Hillary departs from her prepared denial, tells the full story, and apologizes. She pivots to a powerful statement about why Americans fixate on her likability rather than her qualifications. Her candor motivates Vivian Tobin to come forward publicly with her accusation that Bill raped her in 1974. Bill and Hillary battle through the primaries until June 2016, when Hillary secures the majority of delegates. During this time, she begins a relationship with Albert Boyd, a retired investment manager and widower she met at a fundraiser.

In the general election against Republican Jeb Bush, Hillary endures rumors of serious illness and conspiracy theories. She wins on November 8, 2016, by 2.9 million votes and is inaugurated on January 20, 2017. As president, she passes legislation reversing the Hyde Amendment, creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and requiring universal background checks on gun sales. Each night, she reads briefing papers on a White House couch while Albert texts her goodnight from New York. She reflects on the women who did not live to see this day, including her mother and Misty LaPointe, a single mother with cancer she befriended on the campaign trail. The novel closes: "Now other women know they, too, can make it, and not because I or anyone else tells them. They know because they've seen it happen."