BUZZ BOOK: A political novel so accurate it’s funny

In “Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win” (Simon & Schuster, out now), the latest novel from Jo Piazza, a successful Silicon Valley executive moves with her family back to her rural Pennsylvania hometown to launch her own Senate race. Walsh’s opponent is Ted Slaughter, an older Republican who starts pregnancy rumors when she collapses during a pie-eating event. Teen Vogue obsesses over her shoes (when Walsh dons flats for a speech, they want to know if it’s a bold feminist statement), and everywhere she turns it seems like there’s an explosive rumor — sometimes true, sometimes not — making the rounds.

Her campaign is a slog; her social-media manager is annoying, her twins get sick the night before a big speech and her husband’s past threatens to derail the whole thing. In other words, it’s all pretty believable.

Charlotte’s campaign gives her a chance to spend time with family members and old friends who still live in Elk Hollow despite dwindling opportunity and low paychecks. Her brother is chronically unemployed, leaving her sister-in- law to sell wine-themed T-shirts on Etsy to boost the family income. Even her high school boyfriend, now a high-school teacher, has to wait tables at TGI Fridays to pay for his wife’s cancer treatments. And while Charlotte herself seems to genuinely want to help people, she’s no onedimensional heroine. “I didn’t want to create a perfect female candidate. Women are just as flawed as men, and I wanted to create a really complex character in Charlotte who was flawed, ambitious, brave and smart but maybe didn’t deserve to win,” says Piazza, who got her inspiration for the novel from the “soap opera” quality of the 2016 presidential election.

“I wanted to show the interior life of a candidate in an honest way, because no matter how much candidates claim they’re being forthcoming and honest, they’re not. That’s just not how politics work.”

For information on Piazza’s crosscountry book tour July 23-Aug. 4, including stops in Louisville, Ky., Milwaukee and St. Paul, Minn., visit jopiazza.com/events. — Mackenzie Dawson