There are 3,000 letters between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok, then a prominent female journalist, in 18 large, heavy boxes in the archives of the FDR Library in Hyde Park. I first read about the letters, written between 1932 and Eleanor Roosevelt’s death in 1962, in Blanche Wiesen Cook’s exceptional biography, Eleanor Roosevelt (Viking, 1992). She quotes from the letters generously, concluding that the two women were lovers. I went and read the letters. No wild speculation was required.

“I long to kiss the south-east corner of your lips . . . ” and

“My dear, if you meet me, may I forget there are other people present or must I behave?” and

“ . . . I went and kissed your photograph instead and tears were in my eyes. Please keep most of my heart in Washington as long as I’m here, for most of mine is with you!”

These are not the kind of things that I have ever said to just-a-friend, no matter how close. But Blanche Wiesen Cook was pilloried by other historians in 1992 for examining the facts and the letters and concluding that Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok were not just good friends, not just in love, but lovers. Within five years, most of those historians contacted Cook privately and apologized saying, Gee, I finally read the letters. You’re right. (Oops.)

Ken Burns, a great burnisher of the Roosevelt name, is one of the last hold-outs, feeling, apparently, that although Teddy’s maniacal escapades in Africa and FDR’s numerous love affairs only brighten their images, Eleanor Roosevelt’s long love affair was just . . . tabloid gossip. His documentary on the Roosevelts aggravated me as much as his one on jazz had delighted me.

“I assume when you say a relationship you are assuming that there was a sexual relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok. We have no evidence whatsoever of that, and none of the historians and experts believe it,” Burns said at a television critics event in September 2014. “This is an intimate [look at the Roosevelts], not a tabloid, and we just don’t know. . . . We have to be very careful because sometimes we want to read into things that aren’t there.”

And sometimes, Mr. Burns, a smoking cigar is, indeed, a smoking cigar (to paraphrase both Blanche Wiesen Cook and Sigmund Freud).

The thousands of beautifully written—and beautifully penned—letters between these two women brought them to life for me, from their early attraction to their burning passion (which both of them, as staid middle-aged ladies, found hilarious, unexpected and irresistible) to their 30-year friendship and all of its ups and downs, from feelings of neglect, to feelings of possessiveness, to cheerful gossip and the absolute unbreakable private Christmas party of two, and to their grief at the separation they both chose. Although I wish I’d seen the letters Hick had burnt (too racy, she said), the 18 boxes gave me Eleanor and Lorena, Darling and Dearest, determined, despairing, purposeful, wild and restrained, passionate and incapable of parting—and they gave me this book.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of White Houses.

“How many of us have seen our friends stepping into a bad situation and worried over what—if anything—to say, knowing our counsel is unwanted?”

Head to Las Vegas and leave your past at the door. That is Lily Decker’s hope when she trades in her brutal childhood in Kansas for the glamour of the Vegas Strip in 1957.

Elizabeth J. Church’s new novel, All the Beautiful Girls, follows Lily through her difficult, abusive childhood, when her only trustworthy adult is the man who had caused the car accident that killed her parents. But bright lights and big dreams are always on the horizon, and at 18 years old, Lily, calling herself Ruby Wilde, discovers a showgirl life filled with parties, new friends and every luxury she ever wished for. But her heart was broken at a young age, and some pain cannot be avoided forever.

Church shares an in-depth look at the questions that drove the creation of this heartbreaking, unforgettable character.

It’s frightening to admit this, but I’ve entered my seventh decade on this earth, and not only have I often made poor choices in love, but I’ve seen many others do the same. During the years that I practiced divorce law, I saw dozens of couples who had entered into unwise allegiances, including many who were confoundingly loath to let go. They paid enormous sums of money so that they could continue to fight, sometimes over such things as who would win custody of the good brownie pan or visitation schedules for dogs (and whether the dog bowls should travel along)

It all made me think. How do we choose our lovers? Our partners for life? What factors, what previous experiences, come into play? And why do women who are talented, intelligent and strong, who possess financial security and enviable careers, enter into relationships in which they are demeaned and sometimes even endangered? How many of us have seen our friends stepping into a bad situation and worried over what—if anything—to say, knowing our counsel is unwanted? And why oh why is it only in hindsight that we see people for who they really are?

My novel’s protagonist, Lily (who adopts the stage name Ruby when, at age 18, she heads to Las Vegas and becomes a showgirl), is strikingly beautiful. She’s bright and eager to contribute to a world that, in the late 1960s, is in the process of dramatic change. She’s been pummeled in early life; her family is killed in a car accident when she’s just 8 years old, and she’s forced to live with a stoic aunt and an uncle who sexually abuses her. Despite the brutality of her childhood, Ruby works hard and rises through the ranks until she is recognized for her talent and beauty as “Showgirl of the Year.” She can have her pick of any man—or men. And yet, Ruby falls for a man who, while gloriously handsome and sexy, also has a dark side. Ruby is the friend we’ve all had (or been): She is the friend we worry about and struggle to comprehend.

Countless factors shape our wants and needs in a partner. There is that make-or-break physical attraction, that chemical pull—because without it, we simply look the other way. Perhaps a person comes along at a time when we are particularly vulnerable, or when we have a compelling need that the person seems to meet. We see what we want or need to see. And what’s particularly interesting to me is that we let those initial, needful first impressions harden into a vision we come to believe is reality.

Maya Angelou has said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” It’s a wonderfully true statement, and her wording is important. She doesn’t write, “When people tell you who they are”; she writes, instead, “show.” It’s an elegant variation on the truism, “Actions speak louder than words.” She also encourages us to avoid giving someone the benefit of the doubt dozens or hundreds of times over.

After completing All the Beautiful Girls, I came to the conclusion that what we must be careful about with love is what we tell ourselves. How often are we excusing behavior we’d never tolerate in a friend or acquaintance? What are we telling ourselves that justifies our staying in a relationship? Why are we working so very hard to justify poor behavior?

I think the most important thing I learned in writing this book is that just because I understand a behavior—why it might occur, what things might lead someone to be ferociously angry, cruel, cutting or simply careless—does not mean I have to tolerate the behavior. I wonder, though, if these are the kinds of lessons that can be learned in the abstract. Perhaps we first have to travel down the wrong road, trip and stumble, before we can find the right path to love.

Photo credit Anna Yarrow

Mary Bennet and Victor Frankenstein in love—shocking at first, but as author John Kessel reveals in Pride and Prometheus, it makes sense for these two outsiders to connect. Kessel, husband to novelist Therese Ann Fowler and the director of creative writing at North Carolina State University, shares a look behind his new book and how he combined two of our favorite classics.

I got the idea for Pride and Prometheus while sitting at the critique table of the 2005 Sycamore Hill Writers’ Conference, during my comments on Benjamin Rosenbaum’s wonderfully surreal deconstruction of Jane Austen in his story “Sense and Sensibility.” It hit me that Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein were published only a few years apart. Despite big differences in content and sensibility, the two books would have sat on the same bookshelves in 1818. Yet I had seldom heard them spoken of together.

This resulted in my bringing a story titled “Austenstein” (later Pride and Prometheus) to next summer’s conference. After my critique, fellow workshopper Karen Joy Fowler suggested to me that it should be a novel. I resisted. I did not think I could find a novel’s worth of story in Mary Bennet’s brief encounter with Victor Frankenstein and his Creature.

But 10 years later I returned to the idea, realizing that the novelette was only the middle of the story, and by starting earlier and carrying past the end, and adding the perspectives of Victor and his Creature, it would make a book.

Fusing the worlds of Austen and Shelley presented problems if I was not simply going to write some superficial parody. Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein are antithetical books. Austen maintains a cool distance from her characters; she treats them with irony and leavens even the most extreme situations with wry humor. There’s plenty of psychological distress, but for the most part, the most violent thing that happens in an Austen novel is an overheard conversation or someone getting caught out in the rain.

Frankenstein is full of histrionic excess, chases and murders: An artificial human is created from dead tissue, a child is strangled, a home is burned down in vengeance, a woman is hanged for a crime she did not commit, and a man chases a monster to the north pole. There are no jokes.

Frankenstein’s monster does not belong in a Regency drawing room. Mary Bennet does not belong in a 19th-century laboratory.

But the very challenge of mating these disparate tales made it a fascinating project, and the more I got into Shelley’s and Austen’s characters, the more interesting the project became. For one thing, making Mary Bennet the heroine meant I had to evolve her from the sententious, clueless girl she is in Pride and Prejudice. I set my story 13 years after the end of Austen’s novel, placing Mary on the verge of spinsterhood and allowing time for her to mature, to gain a little self-knowledge and sympathy.

It pleased me to tell what’s become of various characters from Austen in the decade after her novel ended. Of course writing sequels to Pride and Prejudice has become something of a cottage industry in recent years, but I hope I have provided as true a vision as they. So here are Kitty Bennet and Mr. Collins, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, Darcy and Elizabeth, Uncle and Aunt Gardiner, and even a servant or two, a little older and perhaps even, in some cases, a little wiser.

Moreover, since my novel occurs during the course of Frankenstein rather than after it is finished, I had to work my story into the gaps in Shelley’s. Pride and Prometheus grew into a secret history of Frankenstein, elaborating on events that occur in that book, adding new ones. What would the Creature think upon observing a ball in London society? How might Frankenstein converse with the Bennets at Darcy’s dinner table? My job with Victor and his Creature was to extend what we know of them from the novel, to go deeper into their characters, to explain some things that are left out and imagine why and how they do the things they do.

In the process I got to contrast the worlds of realism and the fantastic, the novel of manners and speculative fiction, the two kinds of stories to which I have devoted my career as a teacher and writer. It turns out that these distinct visions of the world have things to say to each another.

I hope the result is as thought provoking to read as it was to write.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Pride and Prometheus.

Photo credit John Pagliuca

Jess Montgomery takes readers into Appalachian history with her new novel, The Widows. But the characters behind this tale are more than fascinating—to Montgomery, they are healing.

A few months after our youngest child went off to college, I was at loose ends, partly from empty-nest syndrome but also because for months I’d been unmoored from any clear direction as a writer—a situation exacerbated if not triggered by a difficult situation in my family of origin on my mother’s side. With my mother’s passing, the situation was over but not resolved, at least not in my heart and not with a sense of peace.

So I was happy to distract myself by researching places to visit near Ohio University, situated in Athens County in the foothills of Appalachia, for our daughter’s birthday. We sent our children to college without automobiles, and she was, I knew, also at loose ends—in her case, for a chance to get out of town and hike. She was, after all, an Outdoor Recreation and Education major.

I started poking around on the internet with mundane search terms such as “places to visit near Athens, Ohio,” or “hiking in southeastern Ohio.” A tourism page popped up for Vinton County, which abuts Athens County to the southwest. And on that page was a celebration of a woman the county proclaimed as their most famous resident: Maude Collins, the state’s first female sheriff, in 1925. (The next female sheriff in the state, according to the website, was elected in 1976.)

I was captivated by the image of Maude: young, feminine, somber, strong, beautiful. Modestly and properly dressed in a jacket and ruffled blouse and sensible brimmed hat—clothes that don’t fit the clichéd sequined and feathered flapper image of 1920s women.

But there was something more about her expression—sorrow. A call to duty to go on, as if there’s no other choice. Maude’s sheriff husband, Fletcher, with whom she had five children and for whom she worked as jail matron, was killed in the line of duty while arresting a man for speeding. The story goes that after the funeral, Maude was packing up to head home to her parents in West Virginia when the county commissioners came to her door, asked, “Where you goin’, Maude?” and appointed her to fulfill her husband’s post.

In 1926, she was fully elected in her own right—in a landslide victory. She even gained a bit of national fame after solving a murder that was written up in Master Detective magazine.

But I was struck by more than fascination with a young woman in a law enforcement role that even today is unusual. I wondered what Maude might say to me about my own familial losses and sorrow.

I have no way to know, of course.

But inspired by Maude, my imagination offered up Lily Ross, a wholly crafted character in her own right and the protagonist of The Widows, in which her sheriff husband Daniel is murdered—in this case, by an unknown culprit.

I thought maybe, just maybe, writing about a woman working as a sheriff in a time when it was almost unheard of for women to operate outside the bounds of hearth and home, a woman dealing with complex grief and loss, would remoor me to a writing direction. A direction that might lead not only to a good story but also personal peace.

As the story emerged in my imagination, so did another character—Marvena Whitcomb, a longtime friend of Daniel’s, who has lost her common-law husband in a mining accident and who now works as a unionizer. Marvena becomes a surprising ally for Lily, and together the women work to uncover the identity and motivations of Daniel’s murderer.

Shaping both women are forces beyond their control—women’s rights, unionization, prohibition, coal mining. As well, both are formed, in part, by the hills and hollers, customs and attitudes of Appalachia.

I, too, am a child of Appalachia—both sides of my family of origin go as far back as anyone can trace in Eastern Kentucky. Though I grew up in a part of Ohio close to but geographically outside of Appalachia, the dynamics of growing up in an Appalachian family shaped me far more than actual location of birth.

And as I drew deeply from family lore, music, attitudes, recipes, music and language as threads that wove the backdrop of Lily and Marvena’s story, I found myself slowly starting to, if not fully heal, at least reach emotional resolution. More importantly, as Lily and Marvena uncover the truth of Daniel’s death, they find solace in relationships, friendships and community. Ultimately, I did, too.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a review of The Widows.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek was inspired by the true, historical blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse Library Service, which spanned the 1930s and early ’40s during eastern Kentucky’s most violent era.

Years ago, I stumbled across these heroic librarians of the Great Depression and the rare blue-skinned Kentuckians, and I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I wanted to embrace their strengths and uniqueness in story. There was such rich, magnificent history in the two, and I was surprised that I hadn’t seen them in novels—that neither had been given a large footprint in literary history. I knew it was time for the wider world to experience them fully, to learn about and see the glorious Kentucky female packhorse librarians and the precious blue-skinned mountain folk.

There was a small, isolated clan that suffered from a rare genetic condition called congenital methemoglobinemia. To learn more, I visited with doctors and spoke with a hematologist. I was saddened to find how the Blues were treated—how people shunned and shamed them instead of embracing them for their very uniqueness. It became important for me to humanize these Appalachian folk, to shed light and dispel old stereotypes, to help inform others by bringing these unique people into a novel. I have much empathy for marginalized people, for anyone who has faced or faces prejudices and hardships. It’s easy to feel the Blues’ pain deeply, particularly if you’ve gone through hardships in your own life.

Librarians have always been dear to me. I grew up under the grinding heels of poverty, spending my first decade in a rural Kentucky orphanage, and then on to foster care and beyond, to finding myself homeless at age 14. As a foster child in 1970, I remember going to my first library one lonely summer and checking out a book with the help of a librarian who wisely informed me that I could take home more than one. I was moved by her compassion and wisdom and have not forgotten her to this day. Librarians are lifelines for so many, giving us powerful resources to help us become empowered.

Long ago, I began collecting everything I could on the packhorse librarians and blue-skinned people, poring over archives, old newspapers, pictures, documentaries and more. My research stretched into coal-mining towns and their history, and then into thick-treed forests to explore fire-tower lookouts and interview an old mountaineer who was a former fire-tower watcher. The mountain man had many intriguing stories about living in a fire tower and generously shared them over a modest Christmas meal. Other research included more hours studying Roosevelt’s New Deal and WPA programs. And last, there was the fun and interesting research on mules. I had every intention of riding one until I fell off the mountain.

Sadly, there isn’t a cool or exciting wolf or bear-that-chased-me story to be had here. Instead, this story involves me awkwardly toting a tall stack of heavy Pyrex casserole dishes down dangerous concrete steps for an elderly mountain lady. After an embarrassingly painful fall, my arm suffered seven breaks, but the Pyrex survived with nary a scratch.

In 2016, I had the honor of meeting the talented Georgia playwright and writer Amina S. McIntyre, who was staying nearby at a Kentucky nature conservancy for an artist-in-residency program that I’d supported. Since Amina was new to the area and alone on the 300-acre preserve, I wanted to welcome her and drop off books and pie. Important and conducive to good writing and creating, so I thought! Amina kindly showed me around the pastoral grounds and inside the old antebellum farmhouse that she occupied. She paused to point out an antique courting candle, which ended up becoming an important theme in my novel and inspired the first pages of The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek.

The legend behind the candle says it was used by patriarchs to set a time limit for the suitor who came courting his daughter. I was utterly captivated by the concept—although the unique spiral design of the 100-year-old wrought iron courting candle was likely created as a mere practicality to keep the melting candle in place and from slipping. More folklore than fact. Still, I found the candle a commanding and curious induction of courtship. And I couldn’t stop imagining how the candle could have been the source of someone’s lifelong misery or joy and how it had been passed on to different generations. How wonderful the conversations must have been that took place around and over it.

That visit with Amina led me to look for a courting candle. Eventually I found one: a small curiosity to be admired, more decor than practical. But when my novel went on submission to publishers and I was given the wonderful opportunity to talk to several editors, that changed. As I picked up the phone to chat, I immediately lit the old courter, hoping for the perfect “intended” for my novel. It worked.

Additionally, I spent thousands of hours exploring everything from fauna to flora to folklore to food and longtime traditions indigenous to Appalachia. I was fortunate to have a shoebox apartment atop a mountain in Appalachia and to be able to live in that landscape and spend time with native Appalachians who taught me the lyrics and language of their people and ancestors.

Kentucky has always inspired and influenced my books, as it is both a beautiful and brutal place full of fascinating history, varied landscapes, complex people and culture, and I’m fortunate to live in a region that my heart can draw on.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek.

Natasha Lester’s The Paris Orphan follows model-turned-journalist Jessica May as she struggles with 1940s sexism while covering World War II and raising a young orphan named Victorine. To create her latest historical heroine, Lester drew on the real lives of trailblazers Lee Miller and Martha Gelhorn.

I first came across Lee Miller when I was researching my previous book, The Paris Seamstress. I was immediately fascinated by her story and wanted to channel that fascination into a book. The Paris Orphan was initially inspired by Lee Miler, but the more I researched, the more I discovered other female war correspondents whose stories needed to be told.

Lee Miller was a famous model throughout the 1920s. Her face graced the covers of magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Then her image was used without her knowledge in an advertisement for Kotex sanitary products, and her modeling career came to an abrupt halt. Lee then went to Paris, met photographer Man Ray and learned the artistry of being behind the camera. With the advent of WWII, she became accredited as Vogue’s photojournalist, reporting from Europe.

Lee’s life was equal parts inspiring and heartbreaking. She was an artist and a documenter of the horrors of war, a beautiful woman with the strength to do a difficult job and most certainly a woman who never deserved to be forgotten.

The Hotel Scribe in Paris, which served as the U.S. Army’s press headquarters in WWII.

That’s why, in The Paris Orphan, she became the inspiration for the character of Jessica May. Like Lee, Jess is a photojournalist for Vogue during WWII, and her closest friend is another inspiring woman from the real world, Martha Gellhorn.

Gellhorn fought hard against the many ridiculous rules that were in place to “protect” female war correspondents, rules that actually stopped them from doing their job. For example, the female correspondents were not allowed to go across the English Channel to mainland Europe to report on D-Day and the invasion. When Collier’s, the news magazine Gellhorn worked for, heard about this, they decided to get someone else to do her job. They chose Ernest Hemingway—Gellhorn’s husband. And they didn’t even have the guts to tell her; they asked Hemingway to break the news to Gellhorn instead.

That betrayal may have felled a lesser woman. But Gellhorn wasn’t a lesser woman. She stowed away in the bathroom of a hospital ship going to Normandy and became the first woman correspondent to land on French soil post-invasion. She got her story. Hemingway didn’t. He was stuck in a boat out on the water.

But when Gellhorn returned to London, she was locked up in a nurses’ training camp. Her passport and accreditation papers were taken from her because she’d broken the terms of her accreditation. None of the male reporters were locked up for doing exactly the same thing.

Gellhorn was amazingly resilient. She escaped from the training camp and, without a passport or papers, hitched a ride on a ship going to Italy. There she spent a few months reporting from the Italian front until she was finally allowed back into the main theater of war.

This is just one example of the discrimination female correspondents faced in Europe during WWII. The Paris Orphan weaves the shocking story of this sexism into its pages, as well as the story of how incredible these women were, how hard they fought and why they were also heroes.

Author photo by Stef King Photography.