Washington: Not many people know this that Michelle Obama was not the only women in Barack Obama's life and that the former United States president was in a serious relationship before he met his future wife. 


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An upcoming biography of the former US president "Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama" penned down by David J Garrow shares for the first time the story of the woman Sheila Miyoshi Jager, his love interest, with whom Obama lived in Chicago. 


Jager, who is now a professor at Oberlin College, Ohio, tells author David Garrow, "In the winter of '86, when we visited my parents, he asked me to marry him."


However, Jager's parents objected to the union, believing their daughter to be too young for the nuptial, as she was in her early 20s and two years younger than Obama, who was then 25, according to the review.


However, the duo continued living together despite their parents' objection. 


In early 1987, when Obama was 25, Jager sensed a major change in him. 


"He became. . . so very ambitious very suddenly...by 1987, about a year into our relationship, he already had his sights on becoming president," Jager told the author.


Obama eventually asked Jaeger to marry him again before he departed for Harvard Law School. He wanted her to come with him despite their "increasingly fraught relationship".


After his first year at Harvard, Obama returned to Chicago as an associate at a prestigious local law firm. There he met Michelle Robinson, the future First Lady and an employee at the firm. Their relationship quickly became serious.


In the book, Garrow also writes about how Obama lived, and explored the calculations he made in the decades leading up to his winning the presidency. 


"Every step - whether his foray into community organising, Harvard Law School, even the choice of whom to love - was not just about living a life but about fulfilling a destiny."


Garrow, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Martin Luther King Jr., concludes this massive new work with a damning verdict on Obama`s determination: "While the crucible of self-creation had produced an ironclad will, the vessel was hollow at its core."


(With IANS inputs)