Election

A suburban New Jersey high school teacher confronts a student-body election gone haywire in this darkly comic novel by the author of The Wishbones. Scheduled for release as a feature film in 1998, starring Matthew Broderick.Who really cares who gets elected President of Winwood High School? Nobody — except Tracy Flick. Tracy’s one of those students of boundless energy and ambition who somehow finds the time to do everything — edit the school paper, star in the musical, sleep with her favorite teacher. Her heart is set on becoming President of Winwood, and what Tracy wants, Tracy gets. With weeks to go before election day, her victory is nearly a foregone conclusion.

And that’s just the problem, according to Mr. M — a.k.a. Jim McAllister, faculty, advisor to the Student Government Association and a popular Winwood history teacher. In the name of democracy — not to mention a simmering grudge against Tracy Flick — Mr. M recruits the perfect opposition candidate. Paul Warren is a golden boy, a football hero with a brain and a heart, eager to bulk up his meager resume.

As Winwood High experiences election fever, Mr. M is distracted by a sudden attraction to his wife’s best friend. The two dramas he has created — one personal and private, the other public and political — unfurl simultaneously, with all the players sharing in a life-altering conclusion.

Part satire, part soap opera, Election is an uncommon look at an ordinary American high school, and the extraordinary people who inhabit it.