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What more could there be to know about FDR, given how exhaustively his life has been written about? As it happens, there is more and that focuses on Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the queen of her Washington social circle, later FDR's friend and love-and Eleanor's rival, as the title of Christine Totten's work points out.
In Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd: Eleanor's Rival, FDR's Other Love, Totten presents a carefully structured case for a deep and lasting but chaste love between Lucy and FDR, against the prevailing view that they were clandestine lovers. Totten's research into the personal memories of the Rutherfurd family and the public holdings of the FDR Library establishes a new rich understanding of Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd--her early life, her education, and her role in the social and political scene in Washington. This work gives Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd her due, as a woman in her own right as well as FDR's valued soul mate and friend. 28 b&w illus.
Christine M. Totten is a retired Professor of Communications and former Press Officer at the University of Heidelberg. In 1949, the U.S. State Department invited her, along with other German intellectuals who had opposed the Nazi regime, to educate the German people in American customs and ideologies. Totten later became a Professor in Modern Languages at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, USA. She spent many years researching and writing the autobiography of Sara Delano Roosevelt – mother of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was that research that led Totten to look at the relationship between FDR and Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the subject of this book.
Prologue: Ways to Discover Lucy
I. Lucy as Miss Mercer
Born of the Bluest Blood
The Silver Spoon Slips Out
Rescue from Overseas
Return to Reality
1917-1918: Lucy and Eleanor
Hidden Romance, Open Fallout
II. Lucy as Mrs. Winthrop Rutherfund
Eleanor, Franklin, and Lucy in New Orbits
Franklin Reaches Out to Lucy, 1926-1928
Lucy and the President
Sundown Solace
Epilogue: Two Widows
Notes
Bibliography
Index