White Houses by
Amy Bloom is a fictionalized look into the friendship, and possible love
affair, between Lorena Alice “Hick” Hickcock and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
The story opens in April 1945, soon after President Roosevelt has passed away
and Hick is waiting for the arrival of Eleanor, whom she hasn’t seen in years.
The story then takes us back to when the two women first met. Hick was a
reporter and Eleanor was on the getting ready to set on the road for the White
House as Franklin makes his bid for the presidency. Told in a series of
memories from her childhood through the Great Depression and her life with the
Roosevelts, the book takes a deeper look into these historical icons.
White Houses takes
the reader into the characters and shows them as more than the media and history
has recorded them. Real people with real issues, concerns and struggles as the
United States headed to the depths of the Great Depression and war. I usually
love historical fiction and don’t usually mind when a book features real people,
but I found this book dragged a bit. If the two women were indeed lovers, the
author didn’t display much emotion between them. It felt flat and so matter of
fact. I still enjoyed the story and recommend White Houses to readers who like fictionalized stories of historical
figures.
White Houses
is available in
hardcover and ebook
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