Jill Biden will tell the story of her four years as first lady of the United States in a memoir coming later this year.
Gallery Books will publish Biden’s View From the East Wing in the spring, the press announced in a news release. It says the book “offers a candid and engaging look at a first lady’s life during a unique time in U.S. history, in the midst of the CoviD-19 pandemic and in the shadow of the Jan. 6 insurrection.”
Jill Biden, a New Jersey native, married Joe Biden, then a U.S. senator from Delaware, in 1977; his previous wife had been killed in a car accident along with their infant daughter. Jill Biden worked as an educator for decades, teaching in high schools, a psychiatric hospital, and a community college.
She was the second lady of the U.S. for eight years and became first lady in 2021 after her husband was elected president. During her tenure, she advocated for military families, health care, and women’s rights. She is the author of a previous memoir, Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself.
In the new book, Gallery says, Jill Biden “reflects upon the Biden presidency and its impact on her family. For the first time, she reveals her experiences before, during, and after the unexpected ending to her husband’s bid for reelection. Throughout it all, she saw herself as an ordinary woman, living an extraordinary life.”
Jill Biden shared the news of her memoir in an Instagram video, saying, “Serving in the historic East Wing was the honor of my life. View From the East Wing is an account of my time as first lady. Parts of this story have been told but not all of it. In View From the East Wing, I share the good moments that lifted me and the difficult ones that challenged me. I also reflect on how this chapter in our lives came to a close, when Joe made the unprecedented decision not to seek reelection and pass the torch: what that moment meant for our family and me, personally, after years of public service together.”
View From the East Wing is slated for publication on June 2.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
