Under This Beautiful Dome

June 23, 2014
Former Associated Press writer Mutchler shares the transformative tale of her clandestine five-year marriage to Illinois state senator Penny Severn and its devastating aftermath following Severn’s death from cancer in 1998. Despite owning a house and living together, Mutchler and Severn went to extreme lengths to hide their relationship, fearful of its impact on Severn’s political career. Unexpectedly, Severn’s family did not acknowledge their relationship after her death, and due to a misleading will and a betrayal by Severn’s twin sister, Mutchler lost her home and possessions. More disturbing is the author’s passivity during these ordeals, which she attributes to a childhood defined by fundamentalism. She endured years of depression and alcoholism. Though this memoir deserves a prominent place on gay rights bookshelves (and Mutchler’s frank self-analysis is admirable and moving), readers involved in the gay rights struggles of the 1990s may be mystified by the subtitle’s lack of historical reference, and both sympathetic to and frustrated by Mutchler’s response to injustice. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyon Literary.

September 1, 2014
An attorney and former journalist tells the dramatic story of her five-year undercover lesbian relationship with former Illinois Sen. Penny Severns.When 27-year-old AP reporter Mutchler first saw 41-year-old Penny at the Illinois state capitol in April 1993, a "jolt of electricity passed through [her]." She knew nothing about the senator, including her sexual orientation. Fully aware of the risks involved in seeking out a personal relationship with a high-profile journalistic contact, Mutchler pursued Severns, and the two began a friendship that quickly turned into a passionate relationship. From the start, both women knew that their involvement was problematic-not only due to who they were professionally, but also sexually. Living and loving in secret, they developed complex, often exhausting ruses to hide the true nature of their relationship from all but a few people. Less than a year into their involvement, their situation became even more complicated when Severns was diagnosed with the cancer that would eventually take her life in 1998. Profoundly anguished, Mutchler watched the beautiful, vibrant woman she considered her spouse decline into helplessness, all too aware that "legally, [she] was nothing." The situation only worsened after her partner's death, when the senator's sister and homophobic father distanced themselves from Mutchler and claimed the bulk of the senator's estate-part of which Severns had acquired with the young reporter-for the Severns family alone. The author dwells too frequently and unrestrainedly on the pain and rage of her loss so that the narrative sometimes reads like grief therapy. Still, her book makes a moving case for why the fight for marriage equality must continue. "Somewhere inside my own being," she writes, "I believed that because Penny and I were lesbians, we were second-class citizens. That is the most difficult grieving I do." Courageous and important but emotionally overdone.

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November 15, 2014
Mutchler was the newly appointed Associated Press bureau chief in Springfield when she met Illinois State Senator Penny Severns, who had been a mentor to Barack Obama during his time in the state legislature and had a promising career of her own. Despite the risk to Severns' career and image, and worries about the ethical breaches for Mutchler, the two fell in love and began a five-year relationship, including a surreptitious and unofficial marriage. It was the 1990s in a conservative political town. At great emotional and psychological costs, they developed very elaborate schedules to hide their union, lying to friends, family, and colleagues, making secret rendezvous when they were both in the capital. Their lives became infinitely more complicated when Severns was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her twin had had a bout with cancer, and another sister had died of the disease. Severns' death forced Mutchler to confront the cruel limits on the rights of gay couples. This is a heartbreaking story of love and politics, a timely read with changes occurring across the nation in gay-marriage rights.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)