“Mrs. Roosevelt’s Confidant” - Susan Elia MacNeal

(Maggie Hope book 5)

🇺🇸 MRC opens 15 days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The FDR White House is preparing for the arrival of Winston Churchill and his entourage (including Maggie Hope). The US has officially entered the global fray, and FDR is esger to placate southern voters, thus refusing to address segregation in the military whilst recruiting Black troops, and turning a blind eye to the eventual internment of Japanese Americans. Mrs. R brings these matters to her husband’s attention, as well as the impending execution of Wendell Cotton a fictitious character to represent the all too common plight of African Americans in the U.S.

🇺🇸The character of Wendell Cotton - a Black, teenage sharecropper who killed his white landlord in self-defense is convicted of murder by an all-white jury. MacNeal based Cotton on the real life story of Odell Waller. The character of Andrea Martin was based on civil rights attorney Pauli Murray (who represented Odell Waller) and Anita Reynolds, an actress and writer. Another real-life character inspiration is John Sterling; his Hollywood adventure is based on the experience of Roald Dahl.

🇺🇸 MRC shows us the desperate need to stop Japanese and German expansion. Yet while fighting to contain fascism, the British desire to maintain their colonial empire (formed in much same way), and must contend with the burgeoning Indian independence movement. Similarly, the US is working to contain the Axis powers while at home, Black Americans remain oppressed by Jim Crow. How can the Allies fight the good fight versus the Axis without both US and GB acknowledging their own sins?

🇺🇸 I enjoyed MRC thoroughly, but I had a couple of areas that didn’t sit well with me. The Blanche character reads like an overwrought caricature of a southern debutante fallen upon hard times; not unlike one Scarlet O’Hara, whose name she invokes as inspiration. The resolution gave me a strong whiff of white saviorism which was disappointing; I thought the Andrea Martin character who was strongly written, could have managed. But all in all, the story was still compelling.

🇺🇸 I thought the reaction of the British delegation in DC was interesting. Having come from constant threat of bombs and blackouts, the Brits are struck by the streetlights, absence of power blackouts, the availability of hot running water, and the availability of plentiful foods (especially staples like sugar) not the meager rations they’d been surviving upon.

🇺🇸 Book serendipity: I was in the middle of the Ken Burns FDR documentary when I started MRC so it was nice to see the real-life events as they transpired during this time period. Also, the novel “The Burning Issue” also invoked Caesar and Vignère ciphers.