by Marvella Bayh and Mary Lynn Kotz
Marvella Bayh's life seems like a tragic fairy tale. The pretty debating champ meets the farmer with the "bluest blue eyes," helps him become a national political figure, and dies of cancer, young and still beautiful. But the story is more complex, and moving. Kotz, a Washington journalist (she co-authored Upstairs at the White House), worked with the wife of Indiana Sen. Birch Bayh for nearly two years on this book, producing a vivid, honest portrayal of a political wife. The ambitious daughter of an Oklahoma dirt farmer, Marvella devoted herself to her husband; when he launched his political career she even wrote the Bayh TV spot she appeared in. After the first senatorial campaign, she found herself left out of her husband's life, feeling "like a Barbie Doll who makes speeches; send me out on a campaign for a year, then fold me up and file me in a drawer." In the end, Marvella sadly found a task worthy of her talents, crusading for the American Cancer Society until her own bone cancer killed her at age 46 this year. She once described a student election opponent as "instinctively gracious." From this book, one can only draw the same conclusion about Marvella. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $11.95)
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