Austin, Texas ? President Bush’s confidant Karen Hughes returned to the public stage Sunday with plans to weave her combative defense of the White House into a six-week book tour, then go on the campaign payroll in mid-August.

Prominent Republicans outside the White House have been lamenting for months the absence of her political acumen on a campaign and administration that have suffered repeated public-relations setbacks.

Hughes, 47, enhanced her celebrity by giving up her West Wing office and title of “counselor to the president” in July 2002 so her son, Robert, could go to high school back home in Texas.

The memoir, to be published Tuesday, is called “Ten Minutes from Normal,” referring to an announcement from the conductor on Bush’s campaign train about a town in Illinois.

This is not a tell-all, and readers looking for dirt on Bush and his administration inner circle will be disappointed. He is portrayed as a commanding presence (“Write this down!” he tells her at one point) who likes short sermons and despises leaks from lower-level aides.

Hughes has been the guardian of Bush’s public message throughout his political career, through two campaigns for Texas governor, the primary and general elections of 2000, the recount and into the White House — so much so that she said she feared she “might end up writing a book that sounds like him instead of me.”

Hughes, who is not giving interviews until after an appearance today with Barbara Walters on ABC’s “20/20,” plans to gradually increase her involvement with the campaign in coming months.