Lucy

by Ellen Feldman

Book Overview

On the eve of World War I, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt, fiercely ambitious and still untouched by polio, falls in love with his wife's social secretary, Lucy Mercer. Eleanor stumbles on their letters and divorce is discussed, but honor and ambition win out. Franklin promises he will never see Lucy again.

But Franklin and Lucy do meet again, and again they fall in love. As he prepares to run for an unprecedented...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393325105
• ISBN13: 9780393325102
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

An era when the media did not probe into personal lives of Presidents

This book was well researched. By adding to the bones of historical facts, Ellen Feldman fleshed out the story to convert it into a novel. It helps to understand the whole background of these fascinating principals. Perhaps it was because I had just revisited FDR's Hyde Park Home and library this past spring,that this book had such deep resonance. In this era when the media knows everything and tells everything about the president, this relationship would never have come to fruition. Across the backdrop of the World Wars, Lucy gives a love story which is never smarmy. She does not whine,or complain, but frankly states, how her relationship with Franklin endured over the years,against a turbulent time in our history. Owing to her support, she gave Franklin strength which he never could tap into through his marriage to Eleanor. As no one could ever know what transpired during her visits with Franklin in the White House and at Warm Springs.........Ms. Feldman's background as an historian lends credibility to what really may have been. I didn't want to finish the book, as I knew how it would end.

Historical fiction at its best

I have always been intrigued with the story of the romanance between FDR and Lucy Mercer. When I ran across this book at a local book store I bought it immediately and moved it ahead of other things that I planned to read. The story is romantic and touching. It gives a different view of Frankling and Eleanor and it shows how history could have so easily have been changed. For those interested in FDR and Eleanor its an interesting read. For those who are romantics at heart, its a warm and beautiful story about love and its lasting endurance.

An intriguing love story

I've been an avid reader of historical novels for the past forty years, and consider Ellen Feldman's Lucy one of the best. It is an informative, entertaining and richly detailed depiction of the love affair that Franklin D. Roosevelt had with Eleanor's social secretary Lucy Mercer. It is also a vivid and accurate account of that crucial period in world history between both world wars, and WWII itself. It takes courage for a novelist to write a book narrated by a historical figure, and Feldman does so with masterful restraint, thus creating a realistic and convincing portrait. Lucy comes across as a sensitive and caring woman willing to make any sacrifice for the man she loves, a man who returns her love, and realizes in the end that had Franklin left his wife for her the scandal would have ruined him, and history as we know it would be another story. FDR himself emerges as the giant he was, but susceptible to the passions that also made him human. And Eleanor bears it all with the type of stoical pride, dignity, and wit that made her the great woman she was. I once shook her hand, and still feel her warmth in my palm. It's an important story unknown to many. It's great to know, and recall, that in those pre-paparazzi, pre-TV, pre-tabloid bilge, pre-Ken Star, pre-base politician days people still respected the office of the presidency and didn't stoop to any low level just to make a few bucks, ruin a career, and embarrass a nation. Overall, this is a wonderful novel by the underrated Ms. Feldman. One can only hope she continues to write such fine narratives.

A wonderful, insightful novel

This book was wonderful. It kept my attention throughtout the story and made you wish for more. It made FDR seem like a real person with real feelings. I also become curious about Eleanor and am now reading a biography about her. This is wonderful!

You are THERE...inside the characters and the times

Written in the first person of Lucy, the book instantly immerses you into the styles, the tastes, the emotion of the historic triangle. No moral judgements are made, only the depiction and constancy to the voice of each of the characters. The prose reads like silk, the pace gallops, and the story unfolds as if for the first time. To read and re-read.Marion Liniado