Becoming Madam Secretary [Large Print]

By Stephanie Dray

Book Overview

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She took on titans, battled generals, and changed the world as we know it...

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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• Format: Library Binding
• Large Print: Yes
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0CLQVKZVQ
• ISBN13: 9798885795838
• Release Date: April 2024
• Publisher: Thorndike Press Large Print
• Length: 754 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.7" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Congress: The Same Then as Now

I don't remember who suggested this book for book club, but I should take them flowers and chocolates. This may be the best book of 2025 for me. I loved the way the author mixed in the personal with the political when writing this historical fiction about Frances Perkins, the first woman cabinet member in FDR's administration. The interaction between the two was delightful and maddening at the same time. I learned a lot about the New Deal and Frances Perkins' labors over child labor and a shorter work week, not to mention how she got social security across the finish line, a well-loved program to this day. Of course, then as now, there was a lot of pettiness and tackiness in Congress, the men refusing to vote for it unless FDR took her off the leadership role. Ugh. Remind you of today's Congress? Despite the politics and history, Becoming Madame Secretary is extremely entertaining! It reads like a novel should and the afterword reveals how the author kept it all together. I am recommending it to everyone I meet!!!! A quote by FDR, who led from a wheelchair: "A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who has somehow never learned to walk forward."