Franklin And Lucy

When Franklin Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, returned from an inspection of the battlefront in WWI, El... (more)

When Franklin Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, returned from an inspection of the battlefront in WWI, Eleanor discovered a beribboned collection of letters in his suitcase. They were from Lucy Mercer, who had been Eleanor's private secretary. Thus begins the story of a tumultuous marriage and an affair that lasted to the very day that Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia. Joseph Persico has told this emotional, intimate story with mesmerizing skill, as he reveals it year by year, finally throwing into clear relief the lives of the two most remarkable people ever to occupy the White House; and of the admirable woman who came between them. Roosevelt surrounded himself with women, from his loving daughter Anna, who sometimes help arranged the meetings between her father and Lucy, Missy Lehand, Roosevelt's utterly devoted, longtime secretary, "Daisy" Suckley, a distant cousin who finally exposed the last betrayal to Eleanor, and then there were the dalliances, including Dorothy Shift, publisher of the New York post. Eleanor's story is an emotional rollercoaster all on its own, with over 2,000 letters written to a mannish female reporter, and an obsession with a New York State trooper, as she struggled successfully to find her place in the world. (less)