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No Appalachian Trail for Jenny Sanford

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When South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford went missing in June 2009, aides said he was unreachable because he was ‘hiking on the Appalachian Trail.’ That would have been funny enough, but then to have the conservative Republican turn up in Argentina with his mistress -- well, that was hysterical, right?

Not to Jenny Sanford, his wife of 20 years and the mother of their four sons. She’s getting a divorce. And she’s got a book, ‘Staying True.’ We’ve got an early review:

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The former first lady, a one-time investment banker with Lazard Frères, is smart, focused and very angry. For all the pious references to forgiveness stitched throughout the narrative, revenge is a barely concealed subtext. And revenge she gets, but there’s a good bit of collateral damage in what’s just as obviously unintended self-revelation. In fact, by the time we get to the affair late in the book, it’s a bit of a relief, since this is about the first normative impulse either of the Sanfords seems to have had during their marriage. ... The man she describes is driven, self-absorbed, pathologically cheap and 360-degrees weird. She runs his political campaigns, puts up with his habitual absences and bears him four sons.

Jenny Sanford will appear on ABC’s ‘20/20’ on Friday night to talk with Barbara Walters about ‘the heartbreak behind the headlines,’ being a political spouse and the meaning of ‘Staying True.’

-- Carolyn Kellogg

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