Eleanor and Hick

Eleanor and Hick: the love affair that shaped a First Lady by Susan Quinn

Lorena Hickok was an Associated Press reporter when she met and interviewed First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. They became professional advisors to each other, caring friends, confidantes, and lovers. Eleanor, who was privately educated, a debutante, married her sixth cousin Franklin. It was a disappointing marriage, to a man who was dominated by his mother, and had relationships with other woman. They had six children, who disappointed her in various ways. She was close to her brother Hall, an alcoholic.

Hick grew up poor in rural South Dakota in an abusive home. Worked as a servant, and eventually became a reporter. She reported on the Depression for the WPA, and encourage Eleanor to write her long running column “My Day.”

Hick had saved both sides of their decades long correspondence, and donated the letters to the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park to be opened ten years after Hick’s death. In 1978, young adult biographer Doris Faber, was one of the first to read the letters, and was dismayed by the content, which revealed the emotional and physical affair between the two women. In 1999 Blanch Weisen Cook wrote a biography of Eleanor, in which she treated the relationship more sympathetically.

June Books

Move Your Blooming Corpse by DE Ireland

Fans of “My Fair Lady” and of the Edwardian era will delight in this mystery by the writing team known collectively as DE Ireland. Eliza Doolittle is now teaching diction for Professor Henry Higgins. Colonel Pickering is still on the scene, as is the annoyingly ardent suitor Freddy Eynsford Hill.

Eliza’s father Alfred, who is making good money now as a lecturer for the Moral Reform League, has bought a share in a race horse. When Eliza joins the party at the Royal Ascot, the race is spoiled by a man running out into the course in front of the horses.  The previous week a young woman had done the same, as a protest for women’s suffrage. Was this another protest? It would seem so, except that the body of an actress, and mistress to two of the other horse owners, was found in one of the stalls, with a pitchfork through her.

 


Pride v. Prejudice by Joan Hess
Eleanor and Hick: the love affair by Susan Quinn
The Battered Badge by Robert Goldsborough
The Merry Wives of Maggody by Joan Hess
Murder Stage Left by Robert Goldsborough
Noir by Christopher Moore
Move Your Blooming Corpse by DE Ireland
Clapton: the autobiography by Eric Clapton
The Lady in White by Wilkie Collins
Death and the Language of Happiness by John Straley
Forty Dead Men by Donis Casey
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
India Gray: historical fiction by Sujata Massey

Forty Dead Men

Forty Dead Men by Donis Casey

Alafair Tucker is a farm wife and mother in early 20^th century rural Oklahoma, and this tenth book in the series takes place just after World War i. Her eldest son, George Washington Tucker, known to his family as Gee Dub, is home from the war in France, but Alafair senses that there is something different about him. He spends a lot of time alone, roaming the property on his horse.

 One day he comes across a young woman on the road, tired and lost, but unwilling to trust in a stranger. 

His mother discovers that the young woman is Holly Johnson, from Maine, whose husband was in the war, but hasn’t contacted her since. She discovered he was from a nearby town in Oklahoma,  and is looking for his relatives to find out her status. Is he alive or is she a widow? 

This is one of my favorite mystery series. It includes a lot of the hardships of the times, but Alafair is a hardworking and practical woman, and the family pulls through each crisis.