JIMMY: The Story of the Young Jimmy Carter

Callahan introduces us to Jimmy at twelve in a Georgia hamlet where ""it seemed that most of what the eye could see belonged to Daddy""--and she lays on thick the country-style conversations and Jimmy's earnest, egalitarian thoughts about race. Later, Jimmy is awed and worried by the atomic bomb's debut; he announces to Momma after a first date with Rosalynn that ""I may just marry that little gal""; and big and little incidents come and go in the same blandly fictionalized manner. In connection with his atomic submarine work in the Navy, Jimmy is told that he has ""soaked up a year's maximum allowance of radioactivity in a minute-and-a-half""--then flies eagerly home to his family without further reference to the incident. His father's death takes Jimmy reluctantly (and Rosalynn more reluctantly) back to Plains (""the business needs me, and the town needs the business""), where Callahan then casts him as an idealist integrationist. Carter loses the governorship race to Maddox, is subsequently reborn at a Baptist event, and therefore brings himself to his next, successful campaign. ""You dance divinely, Governor,"" says Rosalynn at the Inaugural Ball. Callahan doesn't take Carter into the Presidency--or offer a clue as to how her wooden hero got there.