White Houses by Amy Bloom

Summary

For a time, Leonora “Hick” Hickok was Eleanor Roosevelt’s closest companion. She was also her mistress, or at least that is how the story is told. For years there has been speculation that the relationship between Elanor Roosevelt and Leonora Hickok was so much more than the public eye saw. This book brings us through this complicated and secretive relationship of Eleanor and Leonora from the time they meet to the death of FDR.  

Thoughts and Opinions

Though this book completely claims to be fiction, sometimes it is hard to not take it as fact. It has long been rumored that Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt did not have a monogamous relationship, but stayed together for the public eye and political gains they both had from the relationship.

This entire book is told from the perspective of Hick, the mistress of the relationship who no matter what will always be the second fiddle to Eleanor’s public relationship with Franklin. To make things more challenging in the 1930s it, of course, wasn’t acceptable to be a lesbian, and if you were a lesbian it was a hidden part of you often covered up by a heterosexual marriage.

I think that Bloom did an excellent job at making the reader feel what Hick was going through emotionally knowing that she would never be able to completely be with the person she loved more than anything else.

Though the main focus of the book was Hick’s relationship with Eleanor, there was also a decent amount devoted to telling about Hick’s childhood. I actually really enjoyed this part of the story and wish that there had been a little more detail about Hick’s life in general. Maybe my curiosity will just lead me down a path to another book about Hick’s life.

Downfalls

There really weren’t many downfalls to this book. At times, it was challenging to keep up with the timeline as the story jumps back and forth between memories and “present-day” which in this story is the weeks following FDR’s death. I also wish that we had gotten more of Eleanor’s point of view about the relationship. Because this is told from the point of view of the mistress there is a slightly jealous undercurrent throughout the story and I think that it would have been interesting to see how Eleanor dealt with the situation. But again, that is probably another book.