Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons
The Lives of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt
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- $229.00
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- $229.00
Descripción editorial
'Gray has managed to do the virtually impossible, and that is to say something new and perceptive about Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt' Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919
'A fascinating two-way mirror onto a world of privilege' Country Life
Jennie Jerome and Sara Delano: two remarkable, often overlooked individuals who were key in shaping the characters of their sons, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and preparing them for the world stage.
Born into upper-class America in 1854, both refused to settle into predictable lives as little-known wives to prominent men. They learned how to take control of their destinies – Jennie in the glittering world of imperial London and Sara in the prosperous Hudson Valley.
The vivacious Jennie married Lord Randolph Churchill, scion of a noble British family. Her deft social manoeuvrings helped not only her mercurial husband but also her ambitious son, Winston. By contrast, deeply conventional Sara Delano married a man as old as her father. After her husband's death, she made Franklin, her only child, the focus of her existence. It was her guidance and financial support that helped him become a successful politician.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Gray (Alexander Graham Bell) presents a compassionate and vivid double portrait of Jennie Jerome and Sara Delano, accomplished women of privilege whose "lives followed similar paths" that would overlap through their famous offspring: Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Both born in 1854, the two Gilded Age debutantes married into political families, became burdened with "an ailing husband," and were widowed in their 40s with the means to live independently. After France's Second Empire collapsed in 1870, Jerome's family abandoned Paris for England, where she quickly met and married Lord Randolph Churchill. By age 26, Lady Churchill had two sons, many admirers (including the future Edward VII), and a husband with a debilitating illness (possibly syphilis). Meanwhile, after Delano became the second wife of widower James Roosevelt, who was 26 years her senior, she nursed him while homeschooling their young son, Franklin, until he left for Groton at 14. Delano became a national figure in her own right during her son's presidency, while Jerome, who died 20 years before her son became prime minister, defied gender norms by spearheading her own projects, including a literary magazine. Gray strikes an expert balance between the big picture and intimate glimpses of each woman. It's an enlightening study of two mothers' crucial influence upon sons who would make history.
