Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray

Title: Becoming Madam Secretary
Author: Stephanie Dray
Publication: Berkley, hardcover, 2024
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: United States

Description: This fascinating historical novel about Frances Perkins, Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor, begins in 1933 when FDR asks her to join his Cabinet and she presents him with a list of ground-breaking goals she would need him to support – get rid of child labor laws, limit working hours, create a minimum wage . . .  . He told her he was on board with her plans. The story then goes back to the early 20th century when Perkins’ career took off in New York as she studied malnutrition of children in Hell’s Kitchen and got involved with their families. She learned advocacy when she worked for the New York City Consumers’ League under Florence Kelley, a legendary reformer who had worked with Jane Addams at Hull House while earning a law degree. Perkins befriended the Tammany Hall political machine which led to New York Governor Al Smith (the object of anti-Catholic prejudice when he ran for president in 1928) appointing her to the New York State Industrial Commission.

Perkins was the first woman to be appointed to an administrative position in New York state government. She became friendly with Sinclair Lewis (who sounds like a jerk), Eleanor Roosevelt, and Averell Harriman’s sister Mary, founder of the Junior League, and she even fell in love and married a political writer, Paul Wilson. As Smith’s presidential campaign failed, Franklin Roosevelt was elected governor of New York and Perkins continued working for the state but beginning a partnership that would change her life and benefit ours. She followed FDR to Washington and began a tenure as Secretary of Labor that would last 12 years. She left in 1945 after Roosevelt’s death, having accomplished nearly all her goals.

My Impression: I knew virtually nothing about Frances Perkins but my curiosity was aroused last spring when I attended a conference at the Department of Labor in Washington, DC. The building was named for Perkins by President Carter in 1980. The grant my colleagues and I were working on focused on quality jobs and the organizers actually had someone dressed as Perkins visit our group as well as a cut-out in the lobby. Her vision and hard work turned that vision into legislation and reality.

At the DOL with Frances

I am not always a fan of historical fiction about people within living memory and Perkins was clearly a private person, especially about the troubled mental health of her husband and only child. Not only did she want her husband’s dignity spared but she was afraid his health and the status of her marriage would be used to distract from her work. The author imagines a scene in which Eleanor starts to confide in Frances about problems in her marriage. It is hard to imagine sharing personal angst with someone in your husband’s Cabinet! But I was also amused because barely two weeks ago I was reading The Diamond Eye, in which a female Russian sniper is sent by Stalin on an exciting visit to FDR’s White House. Despite the language barrier, Mila Pavlichenko also becomes friendly with Eleanor Roosevelt. In this book, Frances meets Eleanor before she meets Franklin. Her early impression of Franklin is that he is an insincere politician, not willing to commit to one of her causes, a bill to protect women working twelve hours a day, seven days a week:

Feeling I had him on the ropes, I said, “You simply must help these women. People look up to you, just as they look up to Theodore Roosevelt. So you must support a fifty-four-hour workweek.”

Unable to meet my eye, Frank murmured, “I do support it, of course, but I have other priorities – ”

“Is reelection one of them?” I broke in. “Because I assure you that every progressive considers this bill a test, and it will come up in your next campaign.”

I was getting more comfortable making threats. But in response, Roosevelt only ducked into the men’s lavatory, leaving me sputtering in the hall.

Perkins – and Dray – believe that it was FDR’s suffering from polio and his struggle to maintain his political life in a wheelchair (mostly hidden from the public, due to newspaper coverage more supportive than today) that developed empathy not seen in his early career, enabling him to advance policies that alienated affluent men but saved the nation in the Depression.

https://www.fdrlibrary.org/perkins

It might have been nice to include more information about Perkins’ influential years at Mount Holyoke, founded by an educational pioneer whose advice to students was: “Go Forward, attempt great things, accomplish great things.” Perkins attributed her sense of mission and public service not only to her education but also to stories passed down by her grandmother of ancestors who were fiery revolutionaries and abolitionists. Overall, despite my misgivings about some of the imagined content, I found this an extremely readable and enjoyable book that again made me realize how much 20th century history I missed in school and college.

Source: Library. This is my fourteenth book for Marg's 2024 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge and my first of 20 Books of Summer.