Both/and A life in many worlds

Hillary Clinton's chief aide recounts years of being in the spotlight--and the tabloids. Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to intellectual parents from South Asia and raised for much of her life in Saudi Arabia, Abedin grew up in "a family of practicing Muslims whose faith was central to their everyday lives." This did nothing to detract from her profound sense of American identity. As she recalls of her early life in the theocracy, "I loved living there, but I don't know if I would look back on it so fondly…had I not been certain that freedoms I couldn't enjoy in my current reality were just a flight away." Her sense of patriotism led her to government service and, from there, as an intern, into the halls of federal agencies and then the White House, where she became a low-level assistant working with the first lady. She excelled and was drawn ever closer and higher into Clinton's orbit, where she found a new role model. "For years, Christiane Amanpour had personified all my aspirations," she writes. "In Hillaryland, I discovered other models for doing important work." At about the same time, she met New York Congressman Anthony Weiner, who gave off a vibe at once suave and predatory; it marked the beginning of a troubled marriage characterized by his betrayals, including a deeply disturbing moment involving the suggestion of "a violation of the innocence of our child." In a time of desperate battle during Clinton's presidential campaign, it robbed Abedin of focus and bandwidth, to say nothing of drawing her into an FBI investigation involving leaked emails. Though much of her story is deeply personal, the author writes with a detached distance from events--yet she retains a battle-wearied optimism and a certainty about the prospects of her former boss: "Hillary Clinton would have been an exceptional President of the United States. Maybe one of the best presidents." Minor in the larger library of Clintoniana but a readable memoir that's both regretful and quietly defiant. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.