With exactly two weeks before Election Day, Usha Vance just gave Americans the most personal peak into her life since her husband, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, was tapped as Donald Trump’s running mate.
And the rare insight has come to light through the books the aspiring second lady totes around on the campaign trail.
The Yale Law-grad mother of three has been a regular presence on the campaign trail since her husband, himself the best-selling author of Hillbilly Elegy, was asked to join the ticket by Trump in July.
Photos of Usha, in fact, always seem to capture her walking around with one or more books, be it Daniel Mason’s ‘North Woods,’ Tana French’s ‘In the Woods’ or a copy of ‘The Iliad.’
Usha Vance spotted carrying a book as she walked off ‘Trump Force 2’ with her husband J.D., the Republican vice presidential nominee in July
Her copy of the Greek epic by Homer is the edition translated by Emily Wilson and released in 2023. Wilson’s translation of ‘The Odyssey’ released in 2017 also received high praise.
But Vance has been reading the book thanks to their young son Ewan.
‘That’s because our now 7-year-old decided in the spring that he was obsessed with mythology,’ Vance told NBC News of the Vances’ eldest of three, in a rare phone interview.
‘He picked up a child’s version of “The Odyssey” and then “The Iliad” and all these other things and became completely obsessed. So to keep up with him, I decided it was time to pick “The Iliad” up myself,’ she said.
Wilson’s translation of ‘The Iliad’ clocks in at more than eight-hundred pages, but it isn’t the only hefty book on her list.
Vance with her husband at a rally in his home town of Middletown, OH on July 22, just after being named Donald Trump’s running mate at the Republican National Convention
Vance walking with her husband before he delivers a speech at a campaign event in Byron Center, MI on August 14
Usha Vance heading onto a plane ahead of her husband J.D. on August 7, 2024
Mason’s critically acclaimed ‘North Woods’ is a 2023 novel about a house in the woods in New England and those who inhabited it over more than three centuries starting with the earliest colonies through present day.
The book ‘In the Woods’ by French, released in 2007, is a mystery novel about a pair of Irish detectives investigating the murder of a 12-year-old girl.
Vance, a Yale-educated litigator who left her DC law firm job soon after her husband was picked as Trump’s running mate, has also been seen carrying a copy of ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land.’
The more than 600-page 2021 novel is by Anthony Doerr, the Pulitzer-prize winning author behind ‘All the Light We Cannot See.’
It tells the story of five characters over eight centuries ranging from a young seamstress in the 15th century to a young girl on a spaceship in the 22nd century.
Her taste in literature, based on the selections she’s been toting about the country, includes a varied array of subject matter, genre and authors.
Usha Vance standing next to her husband J.D. holding money at a Varsity on the campaign trail in Rome, Georgia
The Vances packing in the PDA with a smooch at a campaign rally in Rome, Georgia on October 4
While Usha has been seen at numerous campaign stops across battleground states with her husband, Vance has not delivered public remarks for the campaign since she introduced her husband at the Republican National Convention in July.
She has also not shared what type of work she would like to do as second lady if the Trump-Vance ticket wins in November.
Instead, Vance has stood smiling at her husband’s side or been spotted along the sidelines of events as he shakes hands, rallies support and visits a series of businesses throughout their travels.
‘Obviously, at the convention, I was asked to introduce J.D., and so that was an active role,’ Vance told NBC News. ‘But the thing that J.D. asked, and the thing that I certainly agreed to do, is to keep him company.’
She said having her support on the trail makes her husband ‘more enthusiastic to do it.’
Behind the scenes, she said, they discuss her perception of how an event went or talk about entirely unrelated things all together.
Vance said she shares her perspective ‘as his wife and his best friend, as opposed to the perspective that other people who are on the plane can give.’