Amy Underwood, Lucy Rivera and Natalie Straussman are driven, successful young women who become friends as they make their way to the top. Amy is a not-so-objective cable news producer, Lucy is the host of the popular entertainment show Team Paparazzi, and Natalie is runner up on the top-rated singing competition Pop Icon. The three pals enjoy big city life and the excitement of being in the spotlight, until their different political beliefs threaten to end their relationship.
While Natalie mobilizes millions of her female fans to support Hillary Clinton, Lucy is in bed with the Republican Party’s over-the-top former movie star nominee who most people think is a racist and xenophobe. (Sound familiar?!) Amy finds herself caught in the middle, trying to figure out what the hell happened to the journalism industry as she and her powerful boss reinvent themselves in the social media era.
Like all Americans, Amy, Lucy, and Natalie are concerned about the 2016 election and all the complex things happening in the world around them—from #BlackLivesMatter to immigration reform to mass shootings. Beyond the issues, they’re also thinking about what the opportunity to vote for a woman means for them while tackling the tough choices a girl makes in her 20s and 30s: who to date, whether or not to have kids, what her legacy will be, and how to make the world a better place. Above all else, Amy, Lucy, and Natalie are trying to determine where they each fit in, and if they can stay together while they do it.
It’s said that “the personal is political.” For these three friends deciphering our changing times, the stalemate between liberals and conservatives doesn’t just prevent the country from making progress—it’s a painful matter of the heart.
Few people can say they have worked for Arianna Huffington, Upworthy, and Rock the Vote as well as FOX and a Republican evangelical philanthropist.
Is Maegan Carberry confused? Is she a mercenary?
"I just don't care about political parties. Their sole purpose is to perpetuate themselves, and rarely do they act in the interest of the people," Maegan says.
After 15 years of searching for candidates, organizations or media outlets that care about populism, limited government, personal liberty, and ending oppression, Maegan was tempted to give up. Instead she wrote this novel based on true lessons from her 15 years in politics and media with the hope that millions of Americans will remember this country belongs to us, and we don't have to accept a flawed system.
"Every four years a small group of people in Iowa and New Hampshire pick our candidates, and we're subjected to a farcical series of debates that has literally become a reality TV show," Maegan says. "People promise to change things, and in the golden age of technology we vote with a paper ballot and cross our fingers hoping that someone will deliver. As a society we have an obligation to fundamentally reject this cycle and reimagine it."
Known by her peers as an anti-ideologue and coalition builder, Maegan believes that through a fictional artistic platform readers will be able to explore complex issues in gray areas like we do in our real lives. She encourages enthusiastic readers to bring Do I Have To Vote For Hillary Clinton? to their book groups and start more rewarding conversations than we'll get from the media or the candidates throughout the 2016 cycle.
"This novel is a passionate critique of the path that lead our nation to this point," Maegan says. "It's personal to me as a Millennial woman and the story reflects that, but Amy Underwood's journey to the ballot box will be the same for Americans of all kinds. We're on the precipice of a major demographic shift and facing domestic and global issues that demand us to become a sophisticated and united people. If the system won't help us, then we have to do it ourselves."
For Maegan's full biography, visit www.missmaegan.com.
