Emily Herring Wilson

The Three Graces of Val-Kill Emily Herring Wilson

Emily Herring Wilson examines what she calls the most formative period in Eleanor Roosevelt's life, from 1922 to 1938, when she cultivated an intimate friendship with Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook, who helped Roosevelt build a cottage on Val-Kill Creek in Hyde Park on the Roosevelt family land. There, the three women--the "three graces," as FDR called them--were nearly inseparable and forged a female-centered community for each other, for family, and for New York's Democratic women. Examining this network of fellow close female friends and Democrats, argues Wilson, gives readers an intimate and more complete picture of the Roosevelts and Eleanor's burgeoning independence in the years that marked FDR's rise to power in politics. Wilson takes care to show all the nuances and complexities of the women's relationship that blended the political with the personal. Though the friendship waned as Eleanor faced increased demands on her time as First Lady, she still held Val-Kill as a special place. Val-Kill was not only home to Eleanor Roosevelt but a crucial part of how she became one of the most admired American political figures of the twentieth century.