Alice Lindgren relates her life story that takes her from suburban obscurity in 1950’s Wisconsin to the White House in the new millennium. Over the five decades she has only four addresses, and these provide the structure for the book. At each location, key events happen that are told in detail, while the years between are covered in broader brushstrokes.
1272 Amity Lane, Riley, Wisconsin is her family home where she lives with her parents and grandmother. Alice and her best friend Dena grow up, go to school, get their first jobs and boyfriends. A tragic event befalls Alice, compounded by an unwise reaction that need her grandmother’s discretion and experience to deal with.
Ten years older, wiser, and still single, Alice has an apartment at 3859 Sproule Street, Madison. She works at a local elementary school as librarian, a job she loves, inspiring children to read. She and Dena move on the fringes of affluent society, which is how she meets Charlie Blackwell. The Blackwells are Wisconsin royalty, meat packaging magnates and political movers and shakers – Charlie’s father was governor, his brother is a congressman. Republican, naturally. And Charlie has ambitions in that direction.
The Blackwell’s politics and the riches and sense of entitlement that go with them, are a turn-off for staunchly Democrat Alice, but Charlie is attractive, charming, and as far as Alice is concerned, persistent.
Alice swiftly becomes Mrs Blackwell and moves into the new marital home at 402 Maronee Drive, Milwaukee. She has to cope with her husband’s ambition, his compulsion to create a legacy and so prove his worth in the family. It is no easy ride, despite the material comforts enjoyed. Eventually, Charlie makes Governor.
No spoiler this, but the next address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC, as Alice, with a sense of unreality, lives the life of a FLOTUS, her democratic leanings sitting uncomfortably with US invasions abroad and Roe v Wade under threat at home. And then someone from her Amity Lane past, who knows a secret, gets in touch.
It reads like the
autobiography it could have been. Interesting rather than compelling but
written well enough to make light of its 600 page length.
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