Loving Eleanor, by Susan Wittig Albert

26 April 2016 by Melissa

About the book, Loving Eleanor

Publication Date: February 1, 2016
Persevero Press; Thorndike (Large Print)
Hardcover, Paperback, eBook, Large Print
Genre: Historical Fiction/Biographical Fiction

When AP political reporter Lorena Hickok—Hick—is assigned to cover Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the wife of the 1932 Democratic presidential candidate, the two women become deeply, intimately involved. Their relationship begins with mutual romantic passion, matures through stormy periods of enforced separation and competing interests, and warms into an enduring, encompassing friendship that ends only with both women’s deaths in the 1960s—all of it documented by 3300 letters exchanged over thirty years.

Now, New York Times bestselling author Susan Wittig Albert recreates the fascinating story of Hick and Eleanor, set during the chaotic years of the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Second World War. Loving Eleanor is Hick’s personal story, revealing Eleanor as a complex, contradictory, and entirely human woman who is pulled in many directions by her obligations to her husband and family and her role as the nation’s First Lady, as well as by a compelling need to care and be cared for. For her part, Hick is revealed as an accomplished journalist, who, at the pinnacle of her career, gives it all up for the woman she loves. Then, as Eleanor is transformed into Eleanor Everywhere, First Lady of the World, Hick must create her own independent, productive life.

Drawing on extensive research in the letters that were sealed for a decade following Hick’s death, Albert creates a compelling narrative: a dramatic love story, vividly portraying two strikingly unconventional women, neither of whom is satisfied to live according to the script society has written for her. Loving Eleanor is a profoundly moving novel that illuminates a relationship we are seldom privileged to see and celebrates the depth and durability of women’s love.

Buy, read, and discuss Loving Eleanor

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | IndieBound | Goodreads

About the author, Susan Wittig Albert

Susan Wittig Albert is the award-winning, NYT bestselling author of the forthcoming historical novel Loving Eleanor (2016), about the intimate friendship of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok; and A Wilder Rose (2014), about Rose Wilder Lane and the writing of the Little House books.

Her award-winning fiction also includes mysteries in the China Bayles series, the Darling Dahlias, the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter, and a series of Victorian-Edwardian mysteries she has written with her husband, Bill Albert, under the pseudonym of Robin Paige.

She has written two memoirs: An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days and Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place, published by the University of Texas Press.

Her nonfiction titles include What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest (winner of the 2009 Willa Award for Creative Nonfiction); Writing from Life: Telling the Soul’s Story; and Work of Her Own: A Woman’s Guide to Success Off the Career Track.

She is founder and current president (2015-2017) of the Story Circle Network and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.

For more information please visit www.susanalbert.com and www.LovingEleanor.com, or read her blog. You can also find Susan on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Goodreads, and Pinterest. Like the Loving Eleanor page on Facebook.

My Thoughts

I read this book months ago, when I first received the e-galley, and stupidly didn’t write my review right then, so forgive me if this isn’t detailed.

Put simply, this is a wonderful book. It’s challenging to write plausible fiction about real people, but Susan Wittig Albert has done so before, and in this novel, Loving Eleanor, she’s really gone beyond the even her usual skill. I felt like I was experiencing everything along with Hick. Then again, Albert used the real Hick’s actual letters, which were kept private until her death, out of respect for all of the people mentioned within. Knowing that, can this really be called fiction? Doesn’t it ride the edge of being creative non-fiction? Don’t all true stories include some extrapolation?

Whether or not you accept this novel, and the relationship depicted between Hick and Eleanor as factual, it cannot be denied that this book is truthful. It speaks to period in which both women came of age, and came into their power as adults. It speaks to the political and cultural climate of the bulk of their lifetimes, and it speaks to the longing that we all have, not just for a life partner, but for that bosom friendship so few contemporary women seem to have.

Wittig’s tackled a difficult subject with a delicate hand, giving us a glimpse of the Eleanor Roosevelt we all know and love through the eyes of someone who knew her, and loved her, better and differently, than we who can only view her through the long lens of history could ever do. And yet, this isn’t a dry biography. There is humor. There is warmth. There is also grief and loss.

While much of the novel is Hicks’s view of Eleanor, the reality is that this is Hicks’s own story. We see her build her successful journalism career. We see her have to choose between that career and the woman she loves, and when the object of her affection becomes a global icon, she has to choose again how to be – how close, how far, how truthful.

Again, I come back to: this is a wonderful book. Rich in detail, a perfect blend of fiction and history. Truthful, on the deepest emotional levels.

Goes well with strong coffee and mint Milano cookies.

Giveaway

Three copies of Loving Eleanor by Sisan Wittig Albert are up for grabs! To enter, please use the GLEAM form below.

Rules

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Tuesday, April 26
Review at Bibliotica

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Spotlight at The True Book Addict

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Interview at Unabridged Chick

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Review at Jorie Loves a Story
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Review at Luxury Reading
Review at Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus More
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A Wilder Rose by Susan Wittig Albert #review @netgalley

23 March 2015 by Melissa

About the book, A Wilder Rose

Paperback: 302 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing (March 17, 2015)

The Little House books, which chronicled the pioneer adventures of Laura Ingalls Wilder, are among the most beloved books in the American literary canon. Lesser known is the secret, concealed for decades, of how they came to be. Now, bestselling author Susan Wittig Albert reimagines the fascinating story of Laura’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, an intrepid world traveler and writer who returned to her parents’ Ozark farm, Rocky Ridge, in 1928. There she began a collaboration with her mother on the pioneer stories that would captivate generations of readers around the world.

Despite the books’ success, Rose’s involvement would remain a secret long after both women died. A vivid account of a great literary deception, A Wilder Rose is a spellbinding tale of a complicated mother-daughter relationship set against the brutal backdrop of the Great Depression.

Buy, read, and discuss A Wilder Rose

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About the author, Susan Wittig Albert

Susan Wittig Albert grew up in Illinois, earned her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, and served as an English professor and university administrator at the University of Texas, Tulane University, and Texas State University. A New York Times bestselling author, she has written over fifty mysteries in four different series, as well as other adult fiction, nonfiction, and books for young adults. She lives with her husband, Bill, on thirty-one acres in the Texas Hill Country, where she writes, reads, and pursues her other passions: gardening, raising chickens, and doing needlework. She is the founder of the Story Circle Network, an international organization dedicated to helping women tell their stories.

Connect with Susan

Website | Facebook | Twitter

My Thoughts

I’ve been a fan of the Little House books since I learned how to read, and then I married a man who was raised half an hour from DeSmet, South Dakota. I have walked the banks of Plum Creek (what’s left of it), experienced a winter nearly as cold as the one depicted in The Long Winter, and toured the Little Town on the Prairie more than once. As I grew older, I dove into Laura the person, as opposed to Laura the character, and I’ve read a good number of the books about her.

I’m hardly a scholarly expert on all things Laura, but I’m probably better informed than the average reader, so I came to Susan Wittig Albert’s novel – and it’s important to remember that it is a novel – knowing that the books were much more a collaboration than most readers probably knew. I also came to her novel with a great amount of curiosity about Rose Wilder Lane, herself. I mean, I knew she was a journalist, was instrumental in the founding of the libertarian political movement, and had never had any children that survived past infancy, but the details of her life were largely unknown to me.

In A Wilder Rose Albert gives us a glimpse at one part of Rose’s life – the part surrounding the creation and publication of her mother’s stories, told partly in Rose’s voice, and partly in the voice of a young journalist interviewing Rose. I’m not sure the split perspective was necessary, but it did make an interesting counterpoint. The dialogue and characterization felt appropriate for the period for the most part, but I found her depiction of Laura to be a bit more prim and simpery than the Laura I know from other, scholarly books about her, and I feel like she lost a bit of opportunity to delve into Rose’s personality a bit more deeply. I’ve personally always wondered if Rose was a lesbian – I know this is a common speculation – but Albert didn’t touch on that at all, and I sort of wish she had.

Obviously, when you’re writing a novel about a real person, you have to balance what is right for the story with what is right for history, and ultimately Albert did that, giving us a Rose who is very much her own person, while still being absolutely her mother’s daughter. As the daughter of a woman who has a forceful personality, I know what it’s like to feel somewhat overshadowed. As a creative person in my own right, I know how difficult any kind of collaboration can be.

I’ve seen many reviews take issue with Albert’s depiction of Rose as the driving force behind the Little House… books, basically stating that she was more ghostwriter than editor. I’ve seen material to support her view, and to support a less hands-on approach, and really, I don’t think it matters. This is, after all, a novel, not a scholarly treatise. It offers a possible working relationship that is plausible and interesting, and way more than just ‘behind the scenes of the Laura books.’

Most people who read this novel are probably fans of either LIW’s books or the old NBC series. If that’s the case, their enjoyment of this novel is dependent not on their vision of Rose, but on whether they see Laura-the-writer as a literary icon, or an aging human being with a vast store of memories. My own opinion is that this novel is a really enjoyable read, and really, that’s what’s important.

Goes well with buttered popcorn and crisp apple cider.