A Time to Run

The three-term senator from California newly and handily re-elected in 2004 offers a debut novel to relate "a story I had long wanted to tell." Aspiring political activist Josh Fischer and aspiring journalist Greg Hunter are best friends and roommates at 1970s Berkeley; Josh is dark, sensitive and liberal; Greg is blond, gregarious and leans right. When the two meet Ellen Downey, a petite redhead with a steely determination to make the world a better place, romantic entanglements ensue, with Ellen ultimately marrying Josh shortly after graduation. Josh runs for political office, Ellen heads a mentoring program for at-risk kids, and Greg, married to a wealthy socialite but still in the picture, works as a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. When Josh dies during his Senate campaign, Ellen assumes his candidacy and scores an upset victory; the book opens on the eve of a vote regarding a controversial Supreme Court nominee, with Greg appearing in Ellen's office holding incendiary documents that could alter the course of history or level her career. All of this is by-the-numbers stuff, but Boxer brings been-there nuance to the backbiting, hazardous personal disclosures and naked power mongering of California and Washington politics. -Publisher's Weekly

Writing from the lofty and knowledgeable perspective of a three-term U.S. senator from California, Boxer, with San Francisco novelist Hayes (The Winter Women), offers as her fiction debut an interesting insider's account of a politician's growth from the ground up. While still a student during the heady, idealistic days of the 1970s at Berkeley, Ellen Downey begins her public career as a devoted advocate for inner-city children. During an evening of leafleting, she befriends two young men who help shape her life: the athletic and gorgeous Greg Hunter, who becomes a conservative reporter, and his darkly attractive roommate, Joshua Fischer, a gifted politician who advances from public defender to national politics. Ellen goes on to marry Josh, leaving Greg brokenhearted, and their three lives progress and intersect in ways that test all loyalties. Through these characters and intricate plot twists, Boxer communicates her liberal political convictions while telling an absorbing story. Recommended for all large fiction collections. -Library Journal