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Edwards: I Cried, Screamed Over John's Affair

New book reveals 'crying, screaming' reaction to news of affair

By Evann Gastaldo, Newser Staff

Posted Apr 30, 2009 7:00 AM CDT

(Newser) – Elizabeth Edwards reveals her reaction to husband John’s affair—which she knew about nearly a year before the story broke—in her new book, the New York Daily News reports. “I cried and screamed, I went to the bathroom and threw up,” she writes in Resilience, out May 12. She wanted John to quit the presidential race, and later concluded, “He should not have run.”

John “left most of the truth out” when he first came clean, initially confessing to slipping up just once, Edwards writes. She never calls her husband’s lover, Rielle Hunter, by name, nor addresses the paternity of Hunter's child—rumored to be John’s—in the book. She does, however, ridicule Hunter’s pick-up line—“You are so hot”—and paints her as a “pathetic” groupie.

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John Edwards, right, and his wife Elizabeth Edwards, listen at a Canton, Miss., church, July 16, 2007, during Edward's "poverty tour." (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Elizabeth Edwards talks to the media before giving the keynote address at the Wisconsin Women in Government?s 20th Annual Scholarship Recognition Banquet May 24, 2007, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

John Edwards is shown with videographer Rielle Hunter. On Friday, Aug. 8, 2008, Edwards admitted to having an affair with Hunter. (AP Photo/The National Enquirer)

Former North Carolina senator and Democratic Presidential hopeful John Edwards and wife Elizabeth arrive at the Time 100 gala, Tuesday, May 8, 2007 at the Time Warner Center in New York. (AP Photo/Stephen Chernin)

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I lie in bed, circles under my eyes, my sparse hair sticking in too many directions, and he looks at me as if I am the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. It matters. - Cancer-stricken Elizabeth Edwards, on forgiving husband John

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Edwards: I Cried, Screamed Over John's Affair