The First Ladies

★★★★★★★½☆☆ 7.5/10

400 pages

What’s it about?

This novel imagines the inner workings of the unusual friendship of Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune.

What did it make me think about?

Racism.

Should I read it?

I am so impressed with the relationship between these two authors and the impact they are having by telling these stories, first with The Personal Librarian and now with First Ladies. They are encouraging so many people to think about racism and its origins.  I wish more of us could discuss and explore racism with people who look different than ourselves.

I was interested in this story and appreciate the research that went into it. However, I did not love the book. The conversations came across as stilted and formal. While the exchanges may have begun this way, I cannot imagine two close friends speaking to each other so formally for so many years. I wish their conversations had evolved as their relationship developed. Somehow, they always seemed to be giving a speech to each other. Even their thoughts in their own heads sounded formal. It felt to me too much like a history lesson.  Despite my reservations, it is an interesting relationship from an earlier time.

Many readers of historical fiction will enjoy this book, and it certainly makes you think.

A passage I marked

"Victory comes in never allowing the hateful words that are spoken to draw out these emotions in me."