President Gerald Ford suffered two attempts on his life during his term in office: one by a young woman in Charles Manson's Family, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, and the other by a far more unlikely candidate — an average middle-aged mother of five — Sara Jane Moore. After thirty years in contact with Moore in prison, journalist Geri Spieler deconstructs her life in Housewife Assassin, tracing the path from Moore's small-town upbringing in West Virginia to that fateful moment when she tried to assassinate the president.

Throughout Moore's dodgy life she hid her identity and misled those around her. Through the turbulent 60s and 70s, she married five times, abandoned children, faked amnesia, befriended Patty Hearst's father, became a revolutionary, and worked as an FBI informant turned double agent feeding information to the underground radicals, all before the assassination attempt.

From Spieler's insider correspondence and independent research, including interviews with President Ford himself, she confirms details (the gunshot missed the President's head by six inches) and debunks others (Sara Jane did not "shoot wild" as the press had reported) to deliver a compelling profile of a society lady turned elusive assassin.

Geri Spieler has written about the only woman who shot at a sitting US president. Using her high-level investigative skills, she got Washington to open the file of what happened the day she shot at Pres. Ford instead of what the FBI covered up. In her breakthrough book, Housewife Assassin-The Woman Who Tried to Kill President Ford, (Diversion Books), Spieler reveals the true story of that woman, Sara Jane Moore, who was a mother and doctor’s wife who lived in the country club community of Danville in 1975 and 18 months, she became the first woman who tried to assassinate the president and missed his head by six inches. She is the president of the San Francisco Peninsula branch of the California Writers Club and has authored articles in numerous publications. She has written for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Forbes, and as a Research Director for Gartner, a global technology advising company. She was a regular contributor to Truthdig.com, an award-winning investigative reporting website.  She has written San Francisco Values: Common Ground for Getting America Back on Track. She is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Authors Guild, Women’s National Book Association, the Internet Society, and the Book Critics Circle.

Geri Spieler photo courtesy of the author