Any hope that the new autobiography of the first woman from Nevada elected to the U.S. House of Representatives would be a tawdry, tell-all, Kitty Kelley-style bio are dashed.

Venomous attacks on politicians? Nah.

There were no chapters called "Betrayal by My Mentor" or "Loyalty Ignored" or even "Shoved Aside for a Damn Ex-Democrat."

Former Rep. Barbara Vucanovich isn't a kiss-and-tell writer. Her new book, "Barbara Vucanovich: From Nevada to Congress, and Back Again," is restrained and doesn't take a lot of cheap shots, but it has nuts-and-bolts information about her life, including her 14 years in Congress from 1983 through 1997.

I read it to find out what she'd say about the period in 1985 that could have changed history. That was the year the Republican lawmaker learned that her mentor, Nevada's Sen. Paul Laxalt, the man who had encouraged her to run for the House after she had worked for him for seven years, planned to retire but had nudged her aside as his chosen successor and instead backed Democrat-turned-Republican Jim Santini. Laxalt even urged Santini to switch parties to make the run. I was looking for the dramatic moment when she discovered that Laxalt had shunned her for Santini.

But Vucanovich wrote what was already common knowledge and revealed no strong personal feelings about that turning point when she might have faced off against the Democratic senatorial candidate, Harry Reid.

Instead, Santini lost to Reid.

Whether Vucanovich could have defeated Reid is pure, but intriguing, speculation.

The recently published memoir, co-authored by daughter Patricia Cafferata, summarized Vucanovich's impressions of others in the Nevada delegation in a few paragraphs. Her harshest language was reserved for former Democratic Rep. Jim Bilbray. "Outspoken, abrasive, and opinionated, Jim was the most partisan of the members of the Nevada delegation with whom I served. He made no effort to be cordial and struck me as a Democrat political activist who made no effort to work with Republicans, unlike Harry (Reid) and Dick (Bryan)."

Her analysis of Reid, now the Senate Democratic leader: "Harry's strength was his understanding of the congressional process and how to use it to gain power for himself and Nevada."

People might have forgotten Vucanovich's congressional accomplishments.

She deserves credit for forcing Medicare to cover annual mammograms for women older than 65, which might have saved countless women's lives across the United States.

She deserves credit for the "source income tax bill" that prevents states (including California) from taxing the income of retirees who no longer live in that state. It reduced the tax burden on retirees who moved here from California. It's the bill that brought her the most pride.

And Westerners who hated the 55-mph speed limit on federal highways can thank her for getting it repealed.

She was 61 when she was elected to Congress and 75 when she decided against running again to spend more time with her husband, George, who was fighting leukemia. Today, she is 84 and widowed and lives in Reno.

One conflict Vucanovich addressed in depth is how she considered herself a feminist, but not in traditional terms. A Catholic, she never wavered from her anti-abortion stance. She was proud of her role in killing the Equal Rights Amendment.

Yet she is proud of being the first woman from Nevada elected to a federal office and didn't hesitate to use being a woman to gain a leadership position among House Republicans. She successfully campaigned to be secretary of the Republican Conference in 1994, reminding others that she had been a hard worker, loyal to the party and, yes, would be the first woman in leadership. (That job put her in decision-making meetings with Speaker Newt Gingrich, but she didn't tell any insider tales about him, either.)

Vucanovich tells her story without betraying confidences and without lowering herself to the level of rabble (or Kelley). Her descriptions of coming to Reno for a divorce and making Nevada her home, plus her calm acceptance of life as it unfolds, including her 1983 breast cancer surgery, reminds us that she was a courteous, hardworking woman who never was caught up in a corruption scandal and wasn't a whiner. In today's political world, that is plenty.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.