I MELANIE DUNEA
t’s hardly a secret that many of our presidents have had one or two (or three or more) marital indiscretions. The most famous of them all being Monica Lewinski, the infamous White House intern who had “sexual relations” with former president Bill Clinton. Given the type of career-ending notoriety that Miss Lewinski faced after her affair went very, very public, it’s obvious that a sexual relationship with a president is risky business. So you can imagine that a story about such a relationship is bound to be juicy. In brief, The First Affair is about Jamie McAlister who gets an internship at the White House just in time for the government to shut
down. This propels Jamie and the other unpaid interns to fill the roles of the paid government workers, which ultimately leads her to a sexy late night encounter with the president, Gregory Rutland. Jamie very quickly finds it impossible to keep their affair a secret and confides in her closest friends—but she unfortunately tells the wrong person and word gets out. The rest of the novel deals with the political and emotional fallout after the truth is exposed. I had the lucky opportunity to pick the brains behind the story, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. As with their united authorial front, the pair chose to respond to my questions as a cohesive unit. Oh, did I mention that these