The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

Becoming Madame Secretary by Stephanie Dray is a piece of historical fiction about Frances Perkins, named by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to be the Secretary of Labor, the first woman elevated to a cabinet position and the longest service Labor Secretary ever (for all 16 years of the FDR presidency.)  There have been biographies written about this outstanding public servant’s key role in creating the New Deal, leaving her imprint on the most impactful aspects of the nation’s recovery from the Great Depression.  This includes the envisioning and creation of the law implementing Social Security.  What has not been told before are elements of her personal life, along with the tremendous sacrifices she made in support of both FDR and, before that, New York Governor Al Smith.

Married to Paul Caldwell Wilson, who initially had family wealth enabling her to do volunteer work as well as take low-paid jobs in welfare agencies, Perkins moved on to take important government jobs tackling working conditions.  She fought child labor, inhumane working hours, unsafe factory conditions and went on to negotiate labor contracts, many issues that inevitably required federal action. FDR came to rely on her for campaigning, then for policy challenges, and finally for personal friendship.

Dray delves into a range of work-life balance issues confronting Perkins, including her husband’s bipolar disease that came to require long-term residential care and having to be on call for FDR at important moments in her daughter’s life. Perkins and her life of accomplishments are a worthy topic.

The book is eminently readable. What is especially fascinating are the Author’s Notes describing how she built on letters and other documents to present a linear account of real-life events but how she enhanced that framework with imagining conversations, sometimes compressing timelines for effect, omitting interesting historical figures that would have been distractions, and other devices to capture readers in a believable way. This, after all, is what historical fiction is, and Dray is eminently skilled at the task.

Reading this – and remembering what these “dreaded” entitlement programs have meant and continue to mean to millions of people – could not be more timely or compelling.