What lies beneath the serene and carefully coifed exterior of First Lady Alice Blackwell?

In “American Wife,” author Curtis Sittenfeld (author of “Prep” and “The Man of My Dreams”) explores the life of a down-to-Earth, intensely private woman whose politics are often at odds with those of her ambitious husband.

Sittenfeld’s Alice Blackwell is a fictionalized composite based on the life of outgoing First Lady Laura Bush, with the story conveyed entirely in Alice’s voice. The publication of the novel during a presidential election year can’t be coincidental, but no matter your political leanings, “American Wife” is a novel that allows the reader a peek into the fictionalized life of a woman who reluctantly and improbably becomes First Lady of the United States. Growing up in Riley, Wis., Alice recounts her middle-class childhood with loving parents and a slightly Bohemian grandmother (who has her own secret life). Alice is a voracious reader who dreams of being a teacher.

Her innocence is shattered when, as a teenager, she runs a stop sign and causes a freak car accident that kills her first boyfriend. This accident and her subsequent reckless behavior will haunt her and ultimately become political fodder when Alice falls for and marries Charlie Blackwell. Charlie is the boyish, fun-loving, bawdy, hard-drinking, Ivy League-educated scion of a wealthy Wisconsin family and he fully captures Alice’s heart. Alice discovers that wedding Charlie Blackwell also includes marrying into a boisterous family led by a strong-willed matriarch (called “Maj” for “her Majesty”) and her kind husband who is a former governor and runs a meat-packing empire.

Alice’s world changes from that of an elementary school librarian to wife of the somewhat frivolous Charlie, who has political aspirations and dreams of owning a major league baseball team. After years of hard partying and Alice’s ultimatum that she will leave him unless he stops drinking, Charlie cleans up his act, embraces Christianity, ditches the baseball team, and rather unexpectedly, ends up as president of the United States.

Sittenfeld crafts the characters of Alice and Charlie so that they are entirely sympathetic and wholly human. Alice falls in love with Charlie despite his wealth, and she never becomes entirely comfortable with his elite country club memberships and privileged family. Charlie as president deals with an unpopular war, and Alice’s childhood friend threatens to expose Alice’s car accident and other teenage secrets to a ravenous press seeking to embarrass the president.

Ultimately, this is the thoughtful story of a woman who falls in love with a scamp of a man, and of Charlie’s reliance on Alice’s quiet ways and solid judgment. This novel is really not centered on politics, which are mostly glossed over. It is a coming-of-age story that chronicles the ebbs and flows of a marriage over several decades and tells the tale of a woman who never loses love for and attraction to her husband. Alice may not always like Charlie or understand him, but she never stops loving him.