Join me in celebrating the cover reveal for Stephanie Dray’s upcoming novel, Becoming Madame Secretary. Stephanie is an old friend whom I got to know when she wrote fiction set in the Roman period (Lily of the Nile among others). Most people know her for her best-selling novel America’s First Daughter and her most recent, The Women of Chateau Lafayette. Whether she’s writing from the ancient world or American history, she’s an outstanding writer of historical fiction. I’m looking forward to finding out what she’s done with the life of Frances Perkins.
Here’s the book blurb
New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray returns with a captivating and richly dramatic novel about Frances Perkins, one of the greatest political figures of the twentieth century, and an unsung heroine whose legacy is woven into the fabric of every American life.
More about Becoming Madame Secretary
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.
Links to Further Information
To Preorder Becoming Madame Secretary on Amazon (affiliate link)
To Preorder Becoming Madame Secretary on Bookshop.org
Further Reading
If you’re interested in her fiction set in the ancient world, here’s the link to my review of Stephanie’s Daughters of the Nile in the New York Journal of Books.
For an overview about Stephanie’s novel, My Dear Hamilton, you can go to my post here.