White Houses by Amy Bloom

I like Amy Bloom's work, and I liked it even more after I heard her speak at a Wesleyan Parent weekend event many moons ago. This book, which chronicles a long time affair between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok.   It joins the ranks of fictional accounts of First Ladies, the best of which (for me) is Curtis Sittenfield's American Wife, and is no less scandalous in it's own way.

Much of it is factually based.  Eleanor Roosevelt was dismayed at the loss of privacy being a first lady would entail, and she worried that her position would keep her from the activism that gave meaning to her life.  Lorena Hickok, an AP journalist,  helped her find her equilibrium. Hickok was a tough-minded beat reporter with a nose for a story, and Eleanor — a Good Wife who had looked the other way at her husband’s multiple infidelities — could have been the scoop of a lifetime. But Hick, as she was called, fell in love with her subject, and at least for a time Eleanor reciprocated. Realizing she couldn’t cover someone she had feelings for, Hick resigned from the A.P. and all but moved into the White House. Formally she worked for Harry Hopkins, the head of the New Deal relief programs — a job Eleanor arranged — and reported, brilliantly, from the field about the lives of those affected by the ravages of the Depression. But she also functioned as Eleanor’s increasingly necessary confidante, cheerleader and intimate partner.  Until she was kicked to the curb, either because Eleanor tired of her, or because she couldn't stand the scrutiny.  In any case, this is a fictional account of their long term friendship and affair.