Transitioning from the White House press room to crafting romantic comedies seems an unconventional path.
Yet, Dana Perino’s first foray into fiction, “Purple State,” delves into a question particularly resonant in today’s politically polarized America: can love endure despite deep-seated political differences?
At 53, the former press secretary for George W. Bush and current Fox News host recently found herself the subject of a charming remark from Donald Trump, who sidestepped her inquiry about Iranian starvation by complimenting her looks as they age.
Already an accomplished author, Perino now ventures into storytelling with a narrative about a young political PR professional from New York who unexpectedly falls for a man from the Midwest, residing in a key battleground state.
Inspired by her life experiences, Perino draws from what she refers to as an “unlikely marriage” and her observations of how politics can both divide and unite people.
This theme is central to “Purple State”, released this week. The book traces the journey of Dorothy ‘Dot’ Clark as she moves from New York to the pivotal swing state of Wisconsin, only to find herself enamored with a local truck driver who defies her typical romantic preferences.
Perino says the idea had been with her for years, and began with a much broader fascination about what happens when people from very different Americas are thrown together.
‘A lot of people don’t know or don’t remember that I was born in Wyoming, grew up in Colorado, my family still ranches in Newcastle, Wyoming, and I’ve had the opportunity to live abroad,’ she said, explaining that she has also had stints in the UK, Washington and New York.
Perino – a Fox News host – has turned to fiction with a story about a young New York political PR who falls for a Midwestern man in a swing state
As White House Press Secretary, Perino accompanied President George W Bush to Iraq in 2007
‘I had this idea bopping around in my brain, kind of when reality TV started, that wouldn’t it be fun if I dropped my friends and family from Wyoming into the middle of Manhattan and vice versa, took my friends here and put them on the ranch and said: “Good luck. I’ll see you in three months.”
‘I think that they would thrive but that they would get to know each other better, understand each other better – and then, who knows, along the way love could blossom.’
In other words: what if the people who assume they have nothing in common were forced to discover that they might? A kind of Heated Rivalry for DC’s power elite.
For Perino, though, the roots of the novel are not just political. They are deeply personal, too.
Her ‘terrible quarter life crisis’ – that point when everything looks orderly on paper but feels far less certain in reality – was pivotal.
Looking back on her mid-20s, Perino had the graduate degree, the Capitol Hill job with a member of Congress and the sense that she was climbing steadily. But she had not dated anyone in two years and had become disillusioned with politics during the Monica Lewinsky scandal (‘when none of the women’s groups stood up for her’) and a string of others.
Then came the moment that changed everything.
At a church singles group, she recalled opening up to an older woman about her worries, only to be told: ‘God says: “Fear not. I’ve got you. Relax.” You’re 25. Everything’s going to be fine.’
A few months later while enjoying the summer, she sat next to a man on a plane who would become her husband. This August, she and Peter McMahon will have been together for 29 years.
‘He’s British and 18 years older than me,’ she said. ‘He lived in England at the time. There’s 100 reasons why we shouldn’t have been together.’
Looking back on her mid-20s, Perino had the dream career – but she had not dated anyone in two years and had become disillusioned with politics
She says that when she chose to be loved, her career didn’t suffer the way she expected
The lesson she took from the successful relationship was not that love derails ambition but something quite the opposite: ‘When I chose to be loved, my career did not suffer.’
That, really, is at the heart of Purple State.
Yes, the novel is set against the backdrop of an election. Yes, it plays with the idea of romance across the red-blue divide. But Perino seems more interested in nudging readers away from the rigid life plans and ideological checklists they place on themselves.
Asked whether she deliberately wanted to show that people from opposite sides politically could still be soul mates, Perino agreed.
But polling just after the 2024 election, she pointed out, showed a dramatic increase in Americans saying that they would never even consider dating somebody who voted the other way – a shift she found alarming.
‘Politics is interesting to me. Obviously, I love what I do but politics is not who I am,’ she said. ‘And I think that that’s a sure way to not enjoy your life. It closes you off to friendships and opportunities.
‘Hopefully, in this book is a gentle lesson of: Wear your politics lightly and you’ll enjoy your life.’
Perino namechecked James Carville and Mary Matalin, the veteran Democratic and Republican strategists whose marriage became Washington’s most famous example of opposites attracting.
‘He worked for Bill Clinton, she for George HW Bush, and they fell madly in love and really were able to go out on the speaking circuit and show people you could have debates with your loved one and go home and still be deeply in love.’
She also recalled meeting a couple in Florida who told her they had been in a ‘red-blue marriage’ for 31 years.
Still, when asked whether there were other high-profile Washington couples who had inspired her, Perino was careful, stressing that the novel is ‘aspirational’ and fiction.
One famous bipartisan marriage does not, after all, exactly amount to a dating trend, and modern political life often seems to provide more evidence of people sorting themselves into tribes than escaping them.
That may be why the setting matters. Perino places her heroine not in Washington, where politics can become its own all-consuming social currency, but in Wisconsin – a true purple state where the culture war feels less performative and more lived.
The decision was also her way of saying that the political class often misunderstands the way that the rest of country thinks, forever trying to ‘fix’ Middle America when, in her view, it doesn’t need fixing at all.
‘We don’t need your help. We’re good,’ she said.
Perino also suggested that romance across political lines might feel more plausible outside the usual power centers.
Of her own move to New York, Perino said she had once assumed that politics could only really be done from the capital. But living in Manhattan changed that.
Perino met her husband, British businessman Peter McMahon, when they sat next to each other on a flight
James Carville and Mary Matalin, the veteran Democratic and Republican strategists, became Washington’s most famous example of opposites attracting
In DC, she said, everything felt ‘so transactional.’ By contrast, 225 miles up the I-95 ‘nobody cared what my politics was.’
Even so, she made a rule: ‘I don’t talk politics at the dog park.’ There, in Central Park, Perino said she found common ground with people who would probably vote differently simply because they all shared the much more immediate business of adoring their pooches.
That same instinct shows up in the sort of man she gives Dot.
Perino said she deliberately steered away from the finance bros and status-hungry political obsessives who often dominate the dating pools of New York and DC.
She talked about ambitious young women imagining that the perfect life means the perfect career, the perfect timetable and the perfect man in a puffer vest working in finance – only to discover that life may have other ideas.
What interested her more, she suggested, was the question beneath all that striving: Is the thing you always assumed you wanted actually the thing that will make you happy?
That is why Purple State feels, at its core, less like a book about party labels than one about people loosening their grip on the blueprint they once wrote for their lives.
Perino said that when young women come to her for advice, they often begin with the professional questions – difficult bosses, stalled careers, sexism.
‘Then, at the end of the conversation, almost every single time they’ll say: ‘Can I ask you one more question?’ And it’ll be about how they could possibly find love.’
It is a telling anecdote, and one that helps explain why a woman once known for briefing the White House press corps has now written a novel about romance, risk and the possibility of stepping outside the bubble.
Purple State: A Novel by Dana Perino is published by Harper
