Irene Folstrom says she is trying hard not to make a book about her life revolve around the year and a half she spent as Tiger Woods' girlfriend at Stanford.
Maybe the Bemidji mother and member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe is trying too hard -- if Folstrom really wants people to read the book she's calling "Phoenix."
"Basically, it is about my life's journey, growing up in poverty on the reservation," Folstrom said. "Picking myself up even at an early age and being blessed with an aunt and uncle who raised me. With all of the trauma and violence and everything else deciding, 'I need to get the heck out of here.' So I headed off to Stanford," said Folstrom, who also earned a law degree from Cornell.
Among other issues, Folstrom's book will examine how even an overachiever can become an addict. She describes herself as a recovering alcoholic.
"I was predisposed to it," she said, "having my mom an alcoholic, and my dad abused substances; both are doing well now. Overcoming all those odds, going to these wonderful universities, then to Washington and doing well there, doing legislative work. Eventually, after the births of my sons, succumbing to the pressures of [life]. It's about that kid who goes off to do something great and comes home. ... A lot of it is about addiction." It's also about her life as a divorced mother who once ran for the Legislature. "I think it's interesting," Folstrom said. "It's something I would read."
No small ego here. But even if she writes the socks off her story, it still doesn't sound like a book that will roar up the bestseller lists without a lot more Tiger. And she does have Tiger tales to tell.
In a Golf.com first-person piece, Folstrom wrote of how Earl Woods teased his son and Irene about their puppy love. Folstrom also scoffed in her first-person account about reports that Tiger was in sex rehab: "We enjoyed a normal sexual relationship," she wrote.
She believed their relationship might have ended in marriage had she not been more interested in finishing college. She has only kind things to say about Tiger, who she said is a good person at heart who made gigantic mistakes.
