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Book Reviewed by: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.
Chapter One
New York City
Summer 1909
My family built this country with muddy hands and a spark of madness. On my grandfather's side, we were brickmakers, shoveling clay out of pits along the Damariscotta River in Maine. On my grandmother's side, we were rebels, writing pamphlets against taxation without representation and taking up muskets against the redcoats.
Alas, just like some bricks break in the kiln, so, too, did some of my kin crack in the fire of the American Revolution. Madness runs in families, they say. Courage too. And I wasn't entirely sure which of those inheritable traits was most responsible for my decision as a young woman to move to New York City, where I'd be living in Hell's Kitchen, one of the most notoriously violent tenement slums.
The neighborhood-insofar as one could call it that-was so much under the thumb of gang leaders that policemen couldn't enter without fear of being pelted with stones by lookouts who then escaped down the drainpipes into a maze of rat-...
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
Full Review
(926 words)
(Reviewed by First Impressions Reviewers).
Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye
Becoming Madam Secretary is a proud anthem to a forgotten founding mother. Frances Perkins starts out a bright young thing with an economics degree and an iron determination to make the world a better place, and ends up a shining star: first woman appointed to a presidential cabinet, architect of the New Deal, mother of Social Security, and FDR's much-relied-upon work wife throughout his entire presidency. Stephanie Dray's love and respect for this American heroine shines from every page, as does her impeccable research. Unputdownable! Lisa Scottoline,New York Times bestselling author of Loyalty
Stephanie Dray is one of my absolute favorite authors of historical fiction, and her new novel Becoming Madam Secretary shows why. In the novel, Dray tells the story of the indomitable Frances Perkins….Dray's unique skill is telling the big picture of Frances's life, while at the same time making her a completely relatable wife in a difficult marriage and a working mother when that phrase was unheard of. I couldn't stop turning the pages in this novel, which is both an inspiration and a triumph! Marie Benedict, New York Times bestselling co-author of The First Ladies
What a compelling, important story about a trailblazing woman! In Becoming Madam Secretary, Stephanie Dray takes readers on an enthralling journey as Frances Perkins rises to become the country's most important cabinet member during a crossroads in American history, one with lasting ramifications. Hers is a name we should all know, and this is a novel we should all read. Michelle Moran, bestselling author of Rebel Queen
There is no finer writer of women in American history than Stephanie Dray. In Becoming Madam Secretary, her prose is so vivid that the modern world completely fades away and for a time, you feel you are actually standing with Frances Perkins, battling your way alongside FDR through the Great Depression. This is a novel for every viewer who watched The West Wing and wished it had once been a book. Simply outstanding.
Becoming 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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