SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.

ON a sweltering 109-degree August day, driving past election signs (John McCain, J. D. Hayworth, Ben Quayle) and cacti (saguaro), I pulled into a roadside mini-mall, hoping it was the right one. Entering a barnlike Mexican restaurant called Blanco, I scanned the bright blue banquettes for Meghan McCain.

Ms. McCain, the 25-year-old politics and pop-culture columnist for The Daily Beast and daughter of Senator John McCain, is also the author of the just-published “Dirty Sexy Politics,” a frank, dishy and often scathing chronicle of her experiences during the 2008 presidential campaign. Her book is not only a front-row view of one of the most historic elections in recent American history, it is, as she told George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America,” a “coming-of-age story.”

This July, Ms. McCain left New York, where she had lived for a year after the election, and moved home to Arizona. Phoenix is where she grew up and went to high school. It is where her family lives and where her father campaigned and still campaigns. At Blanco, which she had chosen for lunch (later she told me she often goes there with “clutch girlfriends”), I searched for a dramatic presence. For years, I’d seen her on television and on the Internet, glossy and groomed, with stylish makeup and a bounteous coiffure.

But in a corner booth, I at last spotted a fresh-faced woman with straight unfoofy hair and next to no makeup. Dressed in a black T-shirt with an eagle on it, cutoffs and black flip-flops with crystal peace-sign charms (from a friend’s boutique), she resembled the sunny girls I used to drive to lunch with in high school in Oklahoma (where we, too, had wide-open spaces and abundant Mexican restaurant options at our disposal).