Leading with My Heart: My Life

In 1946 when Virginia Kelley was six months pregnant with the future U.S. president, her husband, William (``Bill'') Jefferson Blythe III, newly returned from the WW II Army, was killed in a car crash. Bill Clinton, who legally took his stepfather's name, mythologized the father he never knew, but he also loved his physically and verbally abusive, alcoholic, gambling stepfather Roger (``Dude''), whom Virginia was to divorce and then remarry because she felt sorry for him. In her highly candid, moving autobiography written with freelancer Morgan, the president's late mother, who died in January, comes across as outspoken, spunky, impulsive and tough. She discusses her hot-tempered, morphine-addicted mother whom she committed to a mental hospital for seven months, her four husbands and her anti-monopoly lawsuit as a nurse anesthetist against the Arkansas medical establishment which she accuses of forcing her out of the profession. She also reveals her ``tough love'' for her cocaine-abusing son Roger, her initial dislike of Hillary Rodham and her struggle with cancer. Photos not seen by PW. First serial to Good Housekeeping; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club featured alternates. (May)