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Summary and Reviews of Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray

Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray

Becoming Madam Secretary

by Stephanie Dray
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (8):
  • Readers' Rating (37):
  • First Published:
  • Mar 12, 2024, 528 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Mar 2025, 544 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray returns with a captivating and dramatic new novel about an American heroine Frances Perkins.

Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and an unyielding determination to make a difference.

When she's not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell's Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists, including the millionaire socialite Mary Harriman Rumsey, the flirtatious budding author Sinclair Lewis, and the brilliant but troubled reformer Paul Wilson, with whom she falls deeply in love.

But when Frances meets a young lawyer named Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a tea dance, sparks fly in all the wrong directions. She thinks he's a rich, arrogant dilettante who gets by on a handsome face and a famous name. He thinks she's a priggish bluestocking and insufferable do-gooder. Neither knows it yet, but over the next twenty years, they will form a historic partnership that will carry them both to the White House.

Frances is destined to rise in a political world dominated by men, facing down the Great Depression as FDR's most trusted lieutenant—even as she struggles to balance the demands of a public career with marriage and motherhood. And when vicious political attacks mount and personal tragedies threaten to derail her ambitions, she must decide what she's willing to do—and what she's willing to sacrifice—to save a nation.

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Reviews

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The job of writing historical fiction about a larger-than-life character like Ms. Perkins and all the important people she had to push, cajole, and convince, requires not only extensive research but also the creativity to try to discern and write what plausibly could have been her thoughts and her conversations. Stephanie Dray does a masterful job of all of the above. As she says in her Author's Note, "Novelists can go where historians rightly fear to tread." (Jim T). What a great book! I'm embarrassed to say I knew nothing of Frances Perkins nor her incredible achievements. A fiction book that sends the reader searching for more information must be a great book and this is one of them. I continue to be astonished that a book about the woman deeply involved in FDR's New Deal and the architect of Social Security could be such a page-turner! (Jeanne W)...continued

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Beyond the Book



US Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins

Frances Perkins on the cover of Time magazineBecoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray narrates the life of Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the first woman to serve in the US Cabinet. Perkins was a tireless supporter of workers' rights and is credited with drafting and lobbying support for some of the most critical parts of the New Deal.

Frances Perkins was born in Boston in 1880 and grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. She attended college at Mount Holyoke where she studied economic history and was inspired by Jacob Riis's account of life in New York City's slums, How the Other Half Lives. She toured factories and interviewed workers to get a sense of the conditions and the issues that mattered to them. From Mount Holyoke, ...

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Read-Alikes

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