Dallas ? Martha Boone Mattia grew up overseas and had only a vague sense of what it meant to be an American. She was even puzzled by the patriotic outburst that followed the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The former newspaper reporter and public relations executive decided she could better understand the American character by interviewing George Bush – 25 of them.

The result is her book, “Conversations With George Bush.” Mattia crisscrossed the country for two years interviewing people who share the president’s name, bending the rules a bit to include women – Georgia, Georgette and Georgianna Bush. She admired the resilience of her subjects. She found them thoughtful but not always well-informed about national or world events.

“I saw more optimism than pessimism, and we’re less cynical,” Mattia said. “They may not read as much as my father made me read, but they think a lot.”

The book includes a Mississippi doctor, a Florida accountant, a New York artist and a Texas health-care worker. Mattia describes their lives and daily struggles and their views about the country.

It’s not a political book, although she did ask about current topics. Almost all the Bushes she interviewed owned guns, but most favored some gun control. Nearly all opposed same-sex marriages, although some supported civil unions for gay couples. They agonized over abortion.

George R. Bush, a doctor and a deacon at his Southern Baptist church in Laurel, Miss., said he won’t perform abortions but mentions the procedure to young pregnant patients.

“That’s a little difficult, coming from a person who’s just talked to you about his Christian belief and his faith,” he told Mattia, “but I think, well, we all have a choice.”

Georgie Bush, a health care worker in the president’s hometown of Midland, said only drug addicts and rape victims should be allowed to get abortions. But she said if her teenage daughter became pregnant, her husband would prefer that she have an abortion rather than “be saddled down with a child and not go to college.”

Many spoke about being Christians; one, the son of a Baptist minister, professed to be an atheist. Most believe in the American dream – a few are living it; others are having their faith tested because they lack health care or a job.

Many of them shared a sense of reinvention, seeking a better life by changing careers, hometowns or spouses. “They have the idea that you’re not stuck where you started in life,” Mattia said during an interview at the suburban Dallas coffee house where she wrote much of the book.

Her findings weren’t revolutionary – they have shown up in public-opinion polls. But by letting regular Americans speak at length about their lives, she got beyond the flat portraits that emerge on television and in newspapers.

Several overcame wrenching hardship, from bankruptcy to the deaths or disabling diseases of their children. Some made extraordinary sacrifices for family. Many had dealt with alcoholism – their own or that of relatives.

Mattia’s first interview, George T. Bush, an accountant in Winter Haven, Fla., spoke at length about his father before mentioning the man was twice sent to prison on drug charges.

Author Martha Boone Mattia crisscrossed the country and interviewed ordinary people named George Bush in their homes for her new book Conver-sations

“He had such an adoration – and deep disappointment – in his father. This was real drama,” Mattia said. “It made me believe every other person would have just as compelling a story.”

Several subjects have read the book. Georgia Bush, an artist in New York, said the idea of writing about people named Bush “seemed a bit arbitrary. I didn’t know if it would work. Would they all be interesting?”

Georgia Bush said it did work because Mattia posed thoughtful questions and got people to open up, then wove an interesting narrative from disparate stories without injecting herself into the story. She liked the book so much, she gave it to cousins in England and a friend in Norway.

George Bush, a retired physicist in Lexington, Va., said foreigners who don’t like U.S. government policies could learn about Americans from the book.

“We’re a bunch of goodhearted people after all. There was very little angry tone in the book,” he said. “I liked that there wasn’t a whole lot of politics. Most people don’t spend all their time thinking about politics.”

Most of Mattia’s subjects liked President Bush, but a few critics said he was charming but headstrong, and they opposed his decision to invade Iraq.

For all of her pursuing people named Bush, Mattia was unable to reach the most famous bearers of the name. She hasn’t heard anything from the White House.