Author Dixie Swanson August 15

Dixie Swanson, author of the Accidental President series, will visit the Camden Public Library at 1:00 on Thursday, August 15, for a book talk. Swanson is a self-admitted bookaholic, with no intention of changing. “I read and write like most people breathe: all day, every day,” she says. The Accidental President is a trio of books about Senator Abby Adams who accidentally becomes President of the United States. She is scared witless, but knows she cannot falter. Imagine being in that room, alone, with the portrait of Washington in front of you and the Washington Monument behind you. When confronted by an insubordinate Secretary of Defense not ten minutes into office, she fires him on the spot. Then she sets about running the country with a deft hand and a Presidential demeanor that the nation comes to adore.

Dixie Swanson is an MD, and has also worked as a television health reporter. Being able to translate medical jargon into plain English speaks to her communication skills. She has also worked for a Washington insider and spent time not only in the Oval Office, but in the Family Quarters as well. So when she combines all these things into a novel, you know that only she could have written it.

“I’m a native Texan,” she says, “but have lived in Washington, D.C. where I worked for an influential lobbyist; then I went to Boston for four years, returning to Texas after that. We try to spend the summers in Maine. I had two successful careers as a pediatrician and a television health reporter (and was taking writing classes) when systemic lupus rather rudely ended both my careers. It sent me into the half-lit world of the chronically ill. That was nearly twenty years ago. I can’t dance and I sure can’t sing, but I can write. It’s time for me to put the books I’ve been writing in my head onto paper!”

She continues, “Since I was raised on books that began ‘Once upon a time’ and ended ‘happily ever after,’ I felt that story-telling was a perfect vehicle for today’s politics, which reads like (bad) fiction anyway. It’s no wonder I chose a fable as a way of speaking out on political change. I hope you’ll laugh, cry, shout out loud, but most of all, I hope you’ll want Abby’s dreams to come true for all of us. Indeed they can. If you are tired of the lobby for any 1% ruining what is good for the 99%, these books will give you a road map for change. And don’t listen to the cynics who say it cannot be done. Whatever 300 million of us want, we CAN have. Any country that put men on the moon can add a few hundred words to the Constitution. After all there are 99 of us for every one in the 1% club. And everyone gets only one vote. So read, enjoy, and consider the changes we can make. These novels are the first step in a journey to change what is broken in politics.”