Secret Lives of Senators

Barbara Boxer’s Satire Follows a Familiar Path

• By Tricia Miller
• Roll Call Staff
• Aug. 4, 2009, Midnight

Reading Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D-Calif.) first novel, “A Time to Run,” is a game. Trying to figure out which characters and circumstances she drew on from real life keeps readers hunting for details in the story of Ellen Fischer, a young woman who is elected California’s new Democratic Senator after her candidate-husband dies in a car accident.