Republican hopeful Mike Pence to release book on ‘how faith makes family’
The former vice-president and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination Mike Pence will release a new book in November: a compilation of “advice on how faith makes family and family makes a life”, entitled Go Home for Dinner.
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Simon & Schuster announced the new project, from a devoutly Christian politician famous for refusing to dine alone with any woman who is not his wife.
Pence’s daughter, Charlotte Pence Bond, was announced as co-author. Pence Bond is also the author of a series of children’s books about the family’s pet rabbit, Marlon Bundo, which the HBO talkshow host John Oliver memorably satirised with a book in which Marlon turned out to be gay.
Pence published a campaign-oriented memoir, So Help Me God, last year. In that project, in preparation for his presidential run and now on the campaign trail, he has sought to gradually distance himself from his former boss – not least because Donald Trump sent to the Capitol the mob which threatened Pence’s life on January 6.
On Thursday, Simon & Schuster said: “When Mike Pence was a young politician, reporters used to ask him: ‘Where do you see yourself in five, 10 years?’ Without fail, the former vice-president would reply: ‘Home for dinner.’”
Before becoming vice-president, Pence was a congressman and governor of Indiana.
Pence looks set to lose the Republican primary, lagging about 50 points behind Trump in polling, despite the former president’s various forms of serious legal jeopardy.
While facing likely indictments over his election subversion and incitement of the Capitol riot, Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 federal criminal charges over his retention of classified records and 34 state criminal charges over his hush money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who claimed a sexual affair.
Simon & Schuster said Pence would offer readers a “straightforward and personal” guide to a lifestyle rather more cloistered than Trump’s.
Promising “short chapters”, the publisher said Pence would walk readers “through the principles he and his wife, Karen, developed to raise their family”, while giving “credit to his parents for setting the precedent of gathering around the dinner table and for being attentive listeners”.
Related: So Help Me God review: Mike Pence’s tortured bid for Republican relevance
Pence, Simon & Schuster said, will “discuss how he and Karen prioritised their relationship, even when they struggled professionally through two failed congressional races and personally with infertility.
“He reveals how he learned to trust God, make difficult choices, and take leaps of faith, all with an eye to what his family needed.”
