Jenny Sanford Memoir Due In May 2010

NEW YORK — The wife of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who separated from her husband in the wake of his affair with an Argentine woman, is writing a memoir.

Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House Inc., said Tuesday it will publish Jenny Sanford's "inspirational memoir" in May 2010.

The publisher says Sanford "will grapple with the universal issue of maintaining integrity and a sense of self during life's difficult times."

The book is currently untitled, and financial terms were not disclosed. Jenny Sanford did not immediately return a telephone message Tuesday.

"She wrote the proposal herself and it's very good," said Carol Schneider, the head of public relations at Random House.

"She will probably be working with a collaborator on the entire book – more of a time issue than anything else because we want to get it out," Schneider added. "It hasn't been established who it would be."

Sanford's husband, once mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2012, acknowledged in June he had a yearlong affair after disappearing from South Carolina for five days.

His staff told reporters he was walking on the Appalachian Trail. Instead he had been in Argentina with his mistress.

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Sanford called the Argentine woman his soul mate during a later AP interview and said he was trying to fall back in love with his wife.

Jenny Sanford, a Georgetown-educated, former Wall Street vice president who helped direct her husband's political campaigns, moved out of the Governor's Mansion in Columbia, S.C., in August, returning to the couple's seaside home on Sullivans Island with their four sons.

She said she and her husband were working on their marriage.

She told the AP she found out about the affair when she came across a copy of a letter to the mistress in one of her husband's files after being asked to find financial documents.

She said her husband repeatedly asked to see his mistress in the time between her discovery and when news of the relationship became public.

"He was told in no uncertain terms not to see her," she told the AP. "It's one thing to forgive adultery; it's another thing to condone it."

Jenny Sanford was not at her husband's side when he revealed the affair at a Statehouse news conference.

She later released a statement saying that while her husband showed lack of judgment "his far more egregious offenses were committed against God, the institutions of marriage and family, our boys and me."

Shortly after the scandal broke, the governor's own book deal was terminated.

Publisher Adrian Zackheim said Mark Sanford had an agreement for a book on fiscal conservatism titled "Within Our Means."

It had been scheduled for publication next March by Sentinel, a dedicated conservative imprint within Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Zackheim called the agreement "a mutual decision."

Comments

[SILVANUS]

I'm going to marry a politician and beg him to trick out on me so I can get a book deal.

Forget talent; these are the new tricks of Publishing.

[tbirdalum]

So you're going to write a book about how you're heart hurt and the position of shame he put you through? I suppose a book like that will help you both as you try to mend your marriage. If the liar would tell the truth I think the public would be more interested in hearing about the humping and bumping from the two cheaters as opposed to "How He Broke My Heart". You would have been better off leaving that knothead from the start rather than dragging your kids through this and now through a book. Do you need the money that bad?

[QOTW]

Is this in anyway necessary? Given a memoir specifically focuses on the noteworthy events and persons the writer has encountered or been witness to, in Mrs Sanford's case these things are largely already a matter of some long standing political report and thus freely available in the public domain without having to pay through the nose for a glossy hard-backed version. Mrs Sanford clearly has too much time and money on her hands already, both of which could be much more respectfully spent on ensuring her 4 young sons are spared just one less public display on the part of their parents.

[SILVANUS]

$ $ $ $ $ $ $

[kanester]

Ah, another memoir. You know, "memoir" is the French word for "lies that sound like truth."

So, since it's a memoir, I'm betting the first lie she'll tell is that she came clean to the public about the affair the minute she "discovered" it in those pesky financial papers. Please, she's as much a conservative hypocrite as her husband. Had the press not exposed the cheating, she never would have mentioned it.

[pammiethekid]

1. Is that really what memoir means in French or are you quoting a particular saying? (Sincere question.) 2. Great post. She is as much a conservative hypocrite as her husband, and these tell-alls from the wives like they had no frickin' idea are getting obnoxious.

[DSOTM]

I think her and Elizabeth Edwards need to do a book signing tour together.

They can call it, The Real Stupid Housewives Of The Carolina's.

[fabricnthreads]

Who will she be an inspiration to?

The other wives of the GOP unfaithful?

[Cheapthrills]

Aren't there enough of these political wives to make some sort of club..maybe...the "I am too needy to get a divorce..so I will write a book" club.

[harriettubman]

I wouldn't read that book. She had some b*lls until she left it up to her philandering husband whether he wanted to remain in the marriage or not. To me he made his choice already when he disappeared for a week to South America.

[Jacqueline3]

The only inspirational thing she can do is GET A DIVORCE! What is wrong with these people, she is writing a book about how her husband found his soul mate? Women have got to be smarter than this.

[harriettubman]

LOL, that's the truth. Get rid of the emotional baggage and forge on. She's teaching her 4 boys to endure whatever it takes to keep a family together--public embarrasment, humiliation of a spouse, putting your family last, flaunting it in front of them and so many other nonchalant things.

[natchez]

The public already knows way to much of your personal life. You are not inspirational, forget the book and take care of your children. The affair is getting the attention like Hollywood scandals, like their isn't enough garbage out there already! Who cares what your story is......

[VOTER]

Will her book be published in Spanish as well as English?

Just asking ..........­..........­...
Hmmm

[Sirenissima]

How about maintaining her integrity by not posing in Vogue and not penning a book? As a woman, I feel for her, but there are MILLIONS of women who go through terrible heartbreak.
However, at the same time, if it allows her to mend her wounds, then who am I to judge?

[jazzybo]

So when is her Oprah apperance?

[VOTER]

Oprah doesn't want her but Jerry Springer and The View do .............

Check your local listing...........

[mybostonjack]

Have some self dignity, leave your cheating loser husband and get on with your life. Go hike the appalachian trail.

[thevillagewag]

Their cheating husbands turn these women into millionaire book sellers. No wonder they stand by them.