Curtis Sittenfeld, the critically acclaimed author of taut adolescent angst novel Prep and The Man of My Dreams, has turned to a real-life character as her inspiration for her third novel.

Sittenfeld, a passionate liberal Democrat, famously wrote a 2004 Salon.com article titled ‘Why I Love Laura Bush’. Reviewing Ann Gerhart’s biography The Perfect Wife, she mused that Laura Bush’s life resembled ‘a great novel’. And in 2006, she decided to write that novel herself. Alice Blackwell and her husband are just different enough from the Bushes for the author to avoid a defamation suit. (Just.) Sittenfeld weaves race, class, fate and wealth into a rich tapestry here, telling the story of a Wisconsin librarian who falls for the boisterous black sheep of a wealthy political family at a barbecue – and marries him soon afterwards.

This is a fascinating book that imagines the experience of being a first lady ideologically distanced from the politics of her president husband.