Becoming Madam Secretary

January 1, 2024

Frances Perkins, born to well-off parents, arrives at the turn of the 20th century in New York City's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood with a fellowship to investigate childhood malnutrition. Enraged at the deplorable living and working conditions she encounters, she is soon ensconced with other powerful women, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, who are equally socially conscious. Shortly after she witnesses women falling to their deaths during the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, Frances is recommended by former president Theodore Roosevelt to a committee on safety in New York State seeking to prevent future workplace tragedies. As she begins to find success in her professional life, she is romantically pursued by fellow reformer Paul Wilson. They marry and face personal tragedies as Frances continues to work for the betterment of those who have less. She fights for workers' rights, meets and becomes enthralled with a young lawyer named Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and forms a partnership with him that will carry them all the way to the White House. VERDICT Dray (The Women of Chateau Lafayette) introduces readers to this real-life trailblazing woman who is the mother of Social Security and became the first woman appointed to a United States presidential cabinet. A fictionalized portrayal of a phenomenal woman who has largely been lost to history.--Susan Santa

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January 22, 2024
Dray (The Women of Chateau Lafayette) delivers an insightful fictional biography of Frances Perkins (1880–1965), the first woman to serve in the U.S. Cabinet. At the outset, Frances studies childhood malnutrition in 1909 New York City as part of her master’s thesis in economics and sociology. Determined to stop children from working in factories and to advocate for the rights of all workers, she takes a job as a lobbyist for the Consumers’ League of New York City. The next year, she meets attorney Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a tea dance, and the two clash over their differing views on social justice initiatives (he’s circumspect, she’s strident). Frances also meets Paul Wilson, an economist and heir to the Marshall Fields fortune, whom she goes on to marry. Dray pulls off an exhaustive and stirring chronicle of Frances’s professional achievements as she struggles to raise a family with Paul, who is diagnosed as manic-depressive. As secretary of labor in FDR’s cabinet, Frances toils to gain support from the president and the public for the Social Security Act, which finally passes in 1935, and she draws on the example of the strong-willed Eleanor Roosevelt to persevere while Paul is institutionalized for his mental illness. Women’s historical fiction fans won’t want to miss this. Agent: Kevan Lyon, Marsal Lyon Literary.

February 15, 2024
Even before she became Franklin D. Roosevelt's secretary of labor and the first woman to serve as a cabinet secretary, Frances Perkins was a tireless advocate for better industrial conditions, an end to child labor, and other social, progressive movements. She had an innate ability to see the humanity in everyone, from a struggling mother to a Tammany Hall politician. Bucking social conventions, she married late and kept her maiden name after her marriage to Paul Wilson. While her marriage had its ups and downs, she remained committed to Paul and supported him and their daughter when his illness rendered him unable to work. It was her professional relationship with FDR, however, that changed the nation. Starting with Frances' graduate work in a halfway house, Dray dramatizes the epic life of this pioneering woman. Though it's practically a who's who of life during the beginning of the twentieth century (Sinclair Lewis, the Roosevelts, and Al Smith all play major roles), Dray never takes the focus off of the remarkable woman at the center of it all. Highly recommended for all historical-fiction collections.

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