A debut novel straight out of the blue (state)

It may come as a surprise to many of her constituents, but for seven years California Sen. Barbara Boxer has been moonlighting from what she calls her "day job" -- as an elected official from the state that boasts the free world's fifth or sixth largest economy -- to write a novel. "A Time to Run" is a for-whom-the-bell-tolls story of a liberal blue-state senator who braves the political mud wrestling in Washington for the sake of her ideals. It is, of course, co-written, with San Francisco author Mary-Rose Hayes.

In Boxer's fictional world, a liberal California senator with views very much like hers goes to bat to defeat the Supreme Court nomination of a woman whose most conspicuous qualification for the job seems to be her conservative credentials -- a plot twist Boxer said she added a year and a half ago.

"It's crazy, the parallels," the Democrat said on a recent day as she whizzed across Los Angeles in a chauffeured SUV to a Hollywood party honoring her book. "It's just remarkable that this all happened," she said, referring to the controversial Supreme Court nomination of conservative Harriet Miers. "My book seemed to be so\o7 prescient\f7."

"It's practically psychic!" Peggy Northrop, the editor of More Magazine, told Boxer when the senator pulled up at a More party to unveil the book. "It's so ... prescient."

"Maybe if the whole political thing doesn't work out you could open a business, Barbara -- psychic extraordinaire," actress Mary Steenburgen, who hosted the party with her husband, former "Cheers" star Ted Danson, told a roomful of Hollywood backers whose fundraising has floated a succession of "blue state" candidates.

As Boxer says, "A Time to Run" is "written out of a blue mind." It comes off as an airplane read, aimed at liberals.

Some might even interpret it as a glimpse into the contemporary electoral frustrations of the Democratic Party. Former President Clinton was a master at the jigsaw puzzle of wedge votes that can turn a swing state red or blue. But no one Democrat since has been able to match the strategic acumen of President Bush's advisor Karl Rove.

In fact, the book could almost be read as a primer on a certain pessimistic view held by some coastal Democrats, who see a far-off middle America as a conservative backwater -- one that has wrested control of the national political culture.