Cover Reveal: BECOMING MADAM SECRETARY by Stephanie Dray
Read more about Dray’s newest historical fiction novel
I’m thrilled to share the cover of Stephanie Dray’s super anticipated new novel Becoming Madam Secretary, which goes on sale March 2024, tracing the life of one of America’s unsung heroes: Frances Perkins. If you don’t know much about Frances Perkins, she was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet. She served as the US Secretary of Labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt and was considered the driving force behind the New Deal.
Learn more about Frances Perkins
The door might not be opened to a woman again for a long, long time, and I had a kind of duty to other women to walk in and sit down on the chair that was offered, and so establish the right of others long hence and far distant in geography to sit in the high seats.
-Frances Perkins
About Stephanie Dray
Stephanie Dray is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today best-selling author of historical fiction.
If you are new to Stephanie Dray, she is best known for her incredible talent at bringing to life the lives of famous women from history, especially those whose lives may be less well-known to modern readers. I always look forward to her books because I learn so much about the women she spotlights in a compelling, narrative non-fiction style of writing.
These women are change makers, and best-selling author Stephanie Dray lends her voice to share their stories.
About Becoming Madam Secretary
New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray returns with a captivating and richly dramatic novel about American heroine Frances Perkins, who pulled the nation out of the Great Depression.
Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and an unyielding determination to make a difference.
When she’s not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell’s Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists, including the millionaire socialite Mary Harriman Rumsey, the flirtatious budding author Sinclair Lewis, and the brilliant but troubled reformer Paul Wilson, with whom she falls deeply in love.
But when Frances meets a young lawyer named Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a tea dance, sparks fly in all the wrong directions. She thinks he’s a rich, arrogant dilettante who gets by on a handsome face and a famous name. He thinks she’s a priggish bluestocking and insufferable do-gooder. Neither knows it yet, but over the next twenty years, they will form a historic partnership that will carry them both to the White House.
Frances is destined to rise in a political world dominated by men, facing down the Great Depression as FDR’s most trusted lieutenant—even as she struggles to balance the demands of a public career with marriage and motherhood. And when vicious political attacks mount and personal tragedies threaten to derail her ambitions, she must decide what she’s willing to do—and what she’s willing to sacrifice—to save a nation.
