Rielle Hunter Writes Memoir

Former U.S. Senator John Edwards

Gosh, who could have seen this coming?  Rielle Hunter, the woman whose affair with John Edwards destroyed both his presidential ambitions and his reputation, has penned a “tell-all memoir” (is there any other kind?) that will be published June 26 by BenBella Books.

In 2006, Hunter had been hired to produce a documentary detailing Edwards’ 2008 presidential run.  The two began an affair that resulted in a daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, born in February 2008.  By then, rumors of the illicit relationship had become more persistent.  But, Edwards had managed to convince his friend and campaign aide Andrew Young to tell the press he was the baby’s father.  Young was married with children.  He and his wife, Cheri, brought Hunter into their home and hopscotched around the country in the months before the baby’s birth.

To keep his affair with Hunter secret – as cads and politicians are wont to do – Edwards allegedly paid her off with money from a campaign donation provided by millionaire socialite Rachel Mellon.  On May 31, a North Carolina jury acquitted Edwards on 1 of 6 counts of campaign fraud against him.

Entitled “What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter, and Me,” Hunter’s book is billed as providing her inside story of the affair that Edwards hid for months from his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, and the American public.

“We are delighted to publish Rielle Hunter’s memoir,” said Glenn Yeffeth, publisher of BenBella Books.  “A lot has been said.  But no one has heard the truth of what really happened until now.”

As a writer, I keep banging my head on my faux wood computer desk wondering why my twisted mind couldn’t have concocted such a dramatic tale that makes every soap opera produced in the Western Hemisphere look like a Hallmark holiday special.  No one would consider it plausible, but it’d still make for a hell of a read.  I almost don’t want to know the kind of advance Hunter got from the publisher, but it’s obvious salacious lifestyles remain popular with the American people.