Reese Witherspoon Has Specific Wish for Debut Novel

Reese Witherspoon is used to promoting books through her namesake book club. Now she's making the rounds to plug her debut novel. The 49-year-old actress wrote Gone Before Goodbye with bestselling author Harlan Coben, and it's out on Tuesday, reports People.

• The book centers on an Army combat surgeon named Maggie McCabe who is caught up in the world of Russian billionaires and private medicine, per the Hollywood Reporter. Witherspoon and Coben unveiled it this week at Shine Away, a summit hosted by her Hello Sunshine media company in Los Angeles.

• "My biggest goal for this book is to make as many little girls as possible want to be surgeons as Elle Woods did for lawyers," she said, referring to her character from the Legally Blonde films. "That would be cool. So yeah, that's probably the metric for my success."
• She said she once dreamed of becoming a surgeon herself and described the novel as a tribute to her parents—her father was a doctor and her mother a nurse—and the medical profession at large.
• Witherspoon told the audience she'd nurtured the story idea for more than two years before teaming up with Coben. "It was a big leap for me to jump in and go, 'OK, I can't just bow out and my part's done," she said, contrasting it with her acting roles.
• Early reviews are rock solid. "The book's plot mechanics hum along with great pace and verve, even if a few of its particulars are too far-fetched to swallow," writes Marc Weingarten at the Los Angeles Times.