Clinton’s Thriller Novelist Venture Is A Lesson In Reinvention

Hillary Rodham Clinton has held many roles in her lifetime—a lawyer, the First Lady of Arkansas, First Lady of the United States, U.S. Senator, Secretary of State and Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States. Now, she can add thriller novelist to her list. At 73, and as someone who’s lived for decades under exhaustive public scrutiny, Clinton is not yet done trying new things. 

Clinton teamed up with her good friend and Canadian author Louise Penny, to pen the political thriller, State of Terror. The novel is set to hit bookstands in October of this year and will be published by Simon & Schuster and St. Martin’s Press, Clinton and Penny’s respective publishers. The book will borrow from Clinton’s inside knowledge of the White House and features a novice Secretary of State confronting terror threats at a time where the American government is “dangerously out of touch and out of power in the place where it counts most,” according to the release.

This will be Clinton’s seventh book but her first foray into the thriller novel space. That said, close readers of Clinton’s prior works might not be altogether surprised by this move. What Happened, Clinton’s 2017 memoir, which reflects on her experience running for president in the 2016 elections, offered a clue. When recounting the outlets that helped Clinton come to terms with the election results, she mentioned prayer, yoga, HGTV, chardonnay and Louise Penny novels.

In her concession speech in 2016, Clinton said, “To all the little girls who are watching this: never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.” It would appear she is now following her own advice of pursuing new dreams—which history would argue she’s done for quite some time. 

According to her memoir, Clinton’s original answer to what she might like to be when she grew up didn’t include any of the titles commonly associated with her career. Instead, as a little girl growing up at the height of the space race, she wanted to go to the moon. In her book, she recounts even going so far as to write to NASA to express her interest, only to hear that women astronauts weren’t yet a thing.  

Clinton’s biography on the National First Ladies Library website similarly showcases Clinton as a woman who routinely sought out new experiences and perspectives. That openness to reinvention even translated to her evolving political ideology. Some might be surprised to learn that Clinton was the head of the Young Republicans Club at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She also campaigned for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964, worked as an intern for the House Republican Conference and attended the 1968 Presidential National Convention. Eventually, though, after finishing law school, Clinton would begin to align herself with the Democratic Party working on Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern’s 1972 campaign and Jimmy Carter’s campaign in 1976. 

Once in the public eye, Clinton continued to challenge conventional norms. As First Lady of Arkansas, Clinton kept her maiden name, continued working as an attorney and was twice named to the list of “100 Most Influential Lawyers in America.” Consequently, she was not the kind of First Lady that Arkansas was accustomed to seeing. A 1979 interview with the Arkansas public affairs program In Focus offers a glimpse at this skepticism for the working First Lady. Throughout the segment, the interviewer notes that Clinton didn’t take part in activities normally associated with governor’s wives and questioned why she kept her maiden name. At one point, when Clinton was discussing her approach to work-life balance, including prioritizing time with her husband, the interviewer interjected. “Ms. Rodham, if you just wouldn’t be a practicing attorney, you see, that would eliminate some of the problems of not being together.” Without missing a beat, she answered, “I think that people who are married to politicians are under a tremendous strain because unless you have a pretty strong sense of your own self-identity, it becomes very easy to be buffeted out by all the people that are around your husband.” 

On the presidential campaign trail with her husband in the early 90s, Clinton was again deemed a controversial “political wife.” In a 1992 Nightline interview, Clinton famously addressed these concerns saying, “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.”

As First Lady in the White House, Clinton again broke rank with tradition. The first thing she did as First Lady was establish her own West Wing office, something that hadn’t ever been done before. Alongside her staff, Clinton remained involved in policy decisions, something that sparked a legal debate. She often attended morning senior staff meetings and developed strong working relationships with several members of the Cabinet. 

Following her time in the White House, Clinton would become the first First Lady to be elected to public office when she won the New York Senate seat. In that capacity, she was also the first woman to be elected senator for the state. Once again, she managed to maintain multiple commitments. “Sworn in as a U.S. Senator on January 1, 2001 but remaining First Lady until January 20 of that year, Hillary Clinton served simultaneously for twenty days as a member of one branch of government while married to the leader of another branch,” reads the National First Ladies Library biography. In 2009, she would become the third woman and only former First Lady to serve as Secretary of State. In 2016, she would become the first woman in U.S. history to win a major-party presidential nomination. 

Throughout her lifetime, Clinton charted a path of her own design. She pursued roles others might have thought were out of reach and, once there, redefined them. She’s lived a life historians write entire novels about, and yet she’s not done living it. In an interview with the New York Times, Clinton is noted as firmly saying, “I choose my cards. I choose them. I play them to the best of my ability. Move on to the next hand.” It would seem political thriller novels are that next hand, and Clinton fans and thriller readers alike are eagerly awaiting the reveal.