Opinion | 'Rodham' Asks: What If Hillary Clinton Never Married Bill? - The New York Times

She did it in “American Wife,” a best seller whose protagonist, Alice Blackwell, stands in for Laura Bush and falls hard for the character modeled on George W. in part because of his exertions between the sheets. She does it again in “Rodham,” her new novel, to be published on May 19. I won’t soon forget the scene in which Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham distract themselves while driving through Arkansas in a way that redefines “joy ride.” “Please don’t get pulled over,” Hillary cautions him. Did this happen? Who knows? The fascination of the first third of “Rodham” is its weave of history and hypothesis as it chronicles the initial meeting of Bill and Hillary at Yale Law School, their courtship and her migration to Arkansas when he makes an unsuccessful run for Congress. Embellished details are grafted onto established events. The fascination of the rest of “Rodham” is its whole-cloth divergence from the record. Sittenfeld’s novel asks: What if Hillary and Bill hadn’t married? What if

She did it in “American Wife,” a best seller whose protagonist, Alice Blackwell, stands in for Laura Bush and falls hard for the character modeled on George W. in part because of his exertions between the sheets. She does it again in “Rodham,” her new novel, to be published on May 19. I won’t soon forget the scene in which Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham distract themselves while driving through Arkansas in a way that redefines “joy ride.” “Please don’t get pulled over,” Hillary cautions him. Did this happen? Who knows? The fascination of the first third of “Rodham” is its weave of history and