Pat Dollard | Young Americans

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John Edwards’ Wife: New Book Will Address Affair

By Roger Friedman

You’d think after the chaos last year surrounding former Senator John Edwards’ personal life, his wife, Elizabeth, would not be looking for more publicity — or inviting questions.

But on May 12th, Broadway Books, a division of Random House, is releasing a new short memoir by Elizabeth called “Resilience,” a follow up to her best selling “Saving Graces.”

Edwards insiders are wondering if “Resilience” will be a tell-all, tell-some, tell-none, or an exercise in denial. The Broadway Books catalog says Edwards has written “an unsentimental and ultimately inspirational meditation on the gifts we can find among life’s biggest challenges.”

The publication of “Resilience” may not prove so inspirational to one reader, however: Rielle Hunter, the woman who gave birth last year to a baby girl whom many speculate was fathered by Edwards. Hunter has privately told friends that the child is Edwards’. Sources say the resemblance is as good as a paternity test.

So far, Hunter and Edwards have not come to any agreement about the baby’s paternity or finances — absolutely some of “life’s biggest challenges.”

The usually private Elizabeth Edwards, I am told, is definitely including her take on the relationship in her new book. Her publicist says she will be addressing John’s “affair and how she experienced it.”

Indeed, how Elizabeth “experienced” may be just as the public did: Edwards suddenly exited the race for the Democratic presidential nomination on January 30, 2008. In early August, after much pressure and a sting by the National Enquirer, he admitted the affair. What he didn’t say: the end of his campaign came exactly one month before Hunter gave birth to baby Frances Quinn.

What followed Edwards’ August confession turned out to be a supermarket tabloid soap opera. As just about everyone knows, Edwards visited Hunter at least twice last year in Los Angeles at the Beverly Hilton Hotel so he could see her new daughter — a child, by the way, which he has still not acknowledged as his own.

The first visit, as I reported last August, was in June 2008. That’s when a source who knew Edwards ran into him in the hotel’s underground parking lot late at night. The source didn’t know it then, but when Edwards took the elevator that bypassed the lobby to a guest room, he was visiting Hunter and baby Frances Quinn.

The second visit, however, reported first by the National Enquirer, was caught on film in July. It led to a partial confession on ABC with Bob Woodruff.

Soon after that, the private arrangements between Edwards and Hunter more or less fell apart. Fred Baron, an Edwards associate, had been funding Hunter’s stay at a rented Santa Barbara home. But Baron died suddenly and tragically in late October after a short bout with cancer. This left Hunter in the lurch. The lease on her house ran out in December. Since then, she’s been relying on the kindness of friends, sources say, and hoping that Edwards would do the right thing.

So far, that hasn’t happened. Hunter has forged on ahead as a single mom, refusing to sell her story or sue Edwards for paternity. The baby’s birth certificate still lists no father.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Edwards has proceeded with the new book. Her publicist says “Resilience” is embargoed until its publication date and that he can’t discuss the specifics of its content. But it’s unlikely that Elizabeth, suffering from incurable cancer, will concede baby Frances Quinn’s paternity, or that the child is a half sibling to her own. That would raise a lot of questions about why the baby has gone without a father or financial resources since its birth last June.

But, as one insider exclaimed yesterday: “What is Elizabeth thinking?” Certainly the minute she does any publicity for “Resilience,” the first questions will be about Rielle Hunter and her baby daughter. And don’t think for a minute that Hunter is going to allow herself to be portrayed as a groupie, sycophant or gold digger. Far from it. I’m told that if “Resilience” minimizes her at all, Hunter will not shy away from showing her own “resilience.” She’s said to be a smart, educated, articulate woman—not at all how she’s been portrayed so far in the supermarket tabloids.