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Description
In 1932, New York City, top reporter Lorena “Hick” Hickok starts each day with a front page byline—and finishes it swigging bourbon and planning her next big scoop. But an assignment to cover FDR’s campaign—and write a feature on his wife, Eleanor—turns Hick’s hard-won independent life on its ear. Soon her work, and the secret entanglement with the new first lady, will take her from New York and Washington to Scotts Run, West Virginia, where impoverished coal miners’ families wait in fear that the New Deal’s promised hope will pass them by. Together, Eleanor and Hick imagine how the new town of Arthurdale could change the fate of hundreds of lives. But doing what is right does not come cheap, and Hick will pay in ways she never could have imagined.
About the Author
Kelly O'Connor McNees is the critically acclaimed author of The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, In Need of a Good Wife, and The Island of Doves. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter.
Praise For…
The combination of sympathetic yet flawed characters, rich atmospheric details about Depression-era America, and lyrical writing make this one a winner. McNees (The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott) has written an engaging, richly detailed historical romance about a once overlooked love story now receiving renewed attention. Highly recommended for readers of Theresa Fowler’s Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald or Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife.
McNees has given Hick a genuine voice both sympathetic and sad. This is a damaged woman in an unequal love story with the foregone conclusion that Hick’s longing will not be matched by her preoccupied lover. McNees’ convincing tale illuminates a difficult time for Americans and a woman following her heart, no matter the cost, in a world that had no place for a person like her.
Kelly O'Connor McNees's compassion for her characters and their exceptional situation make for a compelling tale. I ached for Hick, and rooted for her, and am so glad to see her getting her due.
Letters between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and journalist Lorena ‘Hick’ Hickok inspire McNees’s rich exploration of their secret relationship. A moving and intimate glimpse of Hick and Roosevelt.
Fascinating to read from the very start. Undiscovered Country is one of those books that will stay with me. The writing is beautiful and the characters really came to life. This is a book that I warmly recommend to people that love to read biographical fiction!
A quiet, elegant, meaningful look at an affair that affected American history.
The adept historical novelist Kelly O’Connor McNees chronicles this daring relationship from Lorena Hickok’s point of view. McNees’s more politically detailed fiction has Hick’s ultimate solitude, and her disappointment, at its heart. McNees takes us through the women’s headiest romantic period . . . celebrat[ing] an Eleanor Roosevelt who is warm and affectionate.
Kelly O’Connor McNees writes so richly of women’s lives and struggles. Undiscovered Country is a tender story of strength and self-discovery.
— Eleanor Brown, New York Times bestselling author of The Weird Sisters