Excerpt from Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Yes," I said. "I've been given the opportunity to pursue a master's degree in economics, and I intend to make a survey of child malnutrition for my thesis."

Her eyes narrowed over the top of the file. "Not many women go to college, much less graduate school. Unless they are quite wealthy. Are you an heiress to a family fortune, Miss Perkins?"

In what I hoped was a crisply professional manner, I replied, "No, but my father owns a stationery store on Main Street in Worcester, Massachusetts, if you've ever been. Perkins & Butler Paper and Twine."

"I haven't had the pleasure."

Of course she hadn't. And it wouldn't have mattered if she had. Because my family's brickmaking business dwindled before I was born, forcing my father to stray from the family homestead in Maine in pursuit of middle-class mercantile respectability. But we still had the land and the legends ...

Before my beloved grandmother passed, she regaled me with tales of our family's fiery revolutionaries and abolitionists. James Otis. Mercy Otis Warren. Oliver Otis Howard. With such relations, was it any wonder I had set forth like a vagabond patriot bent on improving the world?

Clearing my throat, I explained, "I sought an education because it's a point of family pride to have learned women. You see, we are kin to the first female scholar in Revolutionary America."

Did I imagine that Miss Mathews was at least a little impressed? "Well, then, it seems you are a young lady of good breeding, but young ladies of good breeding pass through every day. They come for idle curiosity about the poor. Or to rebel against their parents. Or to mark time before marriage, after which we never see them again."

"I assure you that I am not marking time before marriage."

Miss Mathews closed my file. "Why not? Aren't your parents expecting you to marry respectably?"

My parents had, in fact, expected me to do just that, and despite my protestations, my mother continually pressed suitors upon me. But I chuckled and said, "Fortunately, my younger sister has fulfilled family expectations by becoming betrothed to a dentist in Worcester, so I consider myself off the hook and decidedly on the shelf."

Miss Mathews now seemed vaguely amused. "Aren't you interested in finding love, Miss Perkins? In marrying and starting a family of your own? You seem to be a pleasant enough young woman with the sort of dimples that might attract beaus."

I decided to ignore both my own frustrated desires and the slight mockery in her tone. "I'm not as young as I look. What's more, I believe God has called me to better the lives of my countrymen. I could never allow romantic love to obliterate my responsibility to love mankind."

Her lips remained pursed but twitched at one corner as if to fight off an approving smile. "Well, I do not doubt that you're a good Christian on a mission from the Lord with a fine patriot pedigree, Miss Perkins. Or that your intellectual interest is genuine, or that your motives for social work are pure. But I suspect you will find it difficult to live and work in a neighborhood like this."

"I don't see why," I protested. "I've worked in neighborhoods like this before. You know that I volunteered at Hull House in Chicago with Jane Addams, and most recently, of course, I worked in Philadelphia's rougher neighborhoods."

"Where I understand that you fell afoul of the criminal element."

Ah, so this was the reason for my chilly reception ...

"I like to think that they fell afoul of me," I said. After all, my job in Philadelphia had been to defend impoverished young women-especially white and black girls coming off trains from the South-against the pimps, procurers, drug dealers, and fraudulent employment agencies in the city. "As it happens, the criminal element didn't appreciate my creative efforts to combat and expose them."

"I'm told you were attacked."

"I assure you that it was a nearly comical incident in retrospect." I waved a dismissive hand as if to laugh off the incident, though I had been really frightened at the time. A notorious pimp and one of his thugs accosted me on a rainy night when I was returning to my apartment, but I ran them off with my trusty parasol. After that, I persuaded the police to put him out of business, so now I said, "All is well that ends well."

Excerpted from Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray. Copyright © 2024 by Stephanie Dray. Excerpted by permission of Berkley Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.