Lucy

by Ellen Feldman

Overview

An utterly absorbing novel about a famous political marriage and an epic infidelity.

On the eve of World War I, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt, fiercely ambitious and still untouched by polio, falls in love with his wife's social secretary, Lucy Mercer. Eleanor stumbles on their letters and divorce is discussed, but honor and ambition win out. Franklin promises he will never see Lucy again.

But Franklin and Lucy do meet again, and again they fall in love. As he prepares to run for an unprecedented third term and lead America into war, Franklin turns to Lucy for the warmth and unconditional approval Eleanor is unable to give.

Ellen Feldman brings a novelist's insight to bear on the connection of these three compelling characters. Franklin and Lucy did finally meet, across the divide of his illness and political ascendancy, her marriage and widowhood. They fell in love again. As he prepared to run for an unprecedented third term and lead America into war, Franklin turned to Lucy for the warmth and unconditional approval Eleanor was unable to give.

Drawing on recently discovered materials to re-create the voice of a woman who played a crucial but silent role in the Roosevelt presidency, Lucy is a remarkably sensitive exploration of the private lives behind a public marriage. Reading group guide included.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393325102
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/17/2004
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	306
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Ellen Feldman is the author of the novels Lucy and The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank. She writes for the American Heritage Web site and is a sought-after speaker. She lives in New York.

Editorial Reviews

"Novels about the personal lives of public figures are tricky indeed, but Ellen Feldman pulls it off in her touching and sensitive re-imagination of the emotional entanglements of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Lucy Mercer Rutherford."

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

"Lucy Mercer Rutherford is a wonderful creation."

New York Times Book Review

Historical about the love affair between FDR and Lucy Mercer, from Lucy's point of view. Lucy, whose prominent Catholic family has fallen into genteel poverty, takes a job in 1914 as Eleanor Roosevelt's social secretary. Franklin is Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and the Roosevelts are ensconced in happy if cramped domesticity in Washington. FDR's ambitions lie just below the surface, while Eleanor's politics have not yet taken shape-she doesn't even support women's suffrage. Lucy idolizes Eleanor, though, and Feldman (God Bless the Child, 1998, etc.), who also writes as Elizabeth Villars, sketches a charming and bittersweet picture of the two rather similar young women sitting on a carpet surrounded by envelopes, their loss of innocence is soon to come. Although a mutual attraction develops between Franklin and Lucy, nothing untoward happens at first. But war looms, Eleanor goes away with the children, and the sexual tension rises. Lucy increasingly describes Eleanor as a socially conscious but personally insensitive wife driving her husband away by not catering adequately to his needs. Finally, Lucy and Franklin consummate their love in a tawdry roadside motel, and he vows to leave Eleanor-who, when she finds a stash of Lucy's love letters, offers Franklin his freedom. But he places ambition over love and stays put. Lucy shows not the slightest anger over this rejection, although she later views FDR's polio as God's punishment to them both. She marries a wealthy older man she professes to love and spends the next 20 years in the lap of luxury. Then, on the eve of WWII, when she brings her ailing husband to Washington for treatment, she and FDR pick up where they left off, more or less(sex is not mentioned), and he dies with Lucy by his side. In this retelling, Franklin comes across as surpassingly selfish, Eleanor as pathetic, and Lucy as annoyingly saintly. Highly romanticized, oddly apolitical, and not very compelling.

Kirkus Reviews