Becoming Madam Secretary

Stephanie Dray has a knack for writing lively historical novels. Becoming Madame Secretary is not only an introduction to Frances Perkins, a pioneering woman who informed FDR’s economic agenda, but is also a delightfully fun read. Dray skips past the earliest years of Perkins’ life to tell about her work in Hell’s Kitchen, studying the effects of malnutrition in children. It may not be the start of Perkins’ story as a whole, but it is the start of the core of this novel: her political work.

From there, Dray follows Perkins to the White House, and to her tireless work during the Great Depression. The more I read, the more amazed I was that I was so unfamiliar with Frances Perkins, for she helped to shape the working conditions for many Americans alive today. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she has been erased from history books, but her part of the story of the New Deal has been largely neglected. In my work as a reviewer, I’ve read many books about women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Becoming Madame Secretary is easily one of the best of them for being not only informative but a true joy to read.