When John Edwards faced the prospect of an indictment that could put him behind bars, he calmly told his mistress he’d probably wind up in a low-security prison in Virginia more like a country club than a jail. She quickly told him she and their daughter would move there to be near him if that happened.

Rielle Hunter details their phone call just days before his indictment in her new memoir, purchased by The Associated Press ahead of its release.

“What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter and Me,” also includes Rielle Hunter’s mixed views on Edwards’ parenting of their daughter, Quinn, and descriptions of Elizabeth Edwards’ outbursts. At the end of the book, Hunter says she still has romantic feelings for Edwards but doesn’t know how their relationship will turn out.

The book provides a window into Edwards’ psyche as federal prosecutors began their case against him. Days before his indictment, Hunter asked: “So if you went to jail, what kind of jail would it be? One of those country clubs?”

“He said, ‘Yeah.’“

“Where?” she asked.

“‘Probably Virginia.’“

“So Quinn and I will move to Virginia.”

The only low-security federal prison in Virginia is in Petersburg, where former Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry once served time.

On the day of the indictment, the two shared a surreal phone call as a newspaper reporter banged on her door in Charlotte, N.C., while the man she refers to as “Johnny” throughout the book called her cellphone to say that he was also being pursued.

“‘I’ve got helicopters circling my house,’ Johnny said.”

New York publishers had said they were not interested in Hunter’s book, citing her negative image, so it is instead being released through a Dallas-based boutique publisher, BenBella Books, on June 26.

Federal prosecutors spent a year prosecuting Edwards, culminating in a six-week trial that ended last month. Jurors acquitted Edwards on one count of accepting illegal campaign contributions and deadlocked on five other felony counts.

 

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