Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons: The Lives of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt

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. (Sept.)