Customer Reviews

Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley

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Having visited Ms. Suckley's home and the nearby Roosevelt home and library, I felt as though I were along for the ride as I read Daisy's accounts of their picnics and "tea dates" at various sites along the Hudson. In this day of "tell-all" books and seemingly unlimited voyeuristic snooping into Presidential private lives, this book was a pleasant departure from the norm. It also offered new insights into the life of a much-studied President, but one about whom there are still many unknowns. Margaret Suckley, even while preserving much of the account of her longstanding (but unknown to most contemporaries) relationship with FDR, took care to take the more private elements of their friendship to the grave.

This is the story of Franklin Roosevelt's friendship with a distant cousin Daisy Suckley, based on journals long kept from the public by Daisy herself. It is fascinating for that story, but more so for the information it gives of a time in our history, when the President could leave the country and only those closest to him would know it. As Daisy relates the daily comings and goings of her life, she give us an intimate look at how Franklin Roosevelt managed to travel to secret meetings with other world leaders. She also lets us see Rosevelt's failing health and how his determination to win the war kept him going.

Geoffrey C. Ward's editing keeps the story moving. It may not be scholarly history, but it is a fascinating read for any history buff looking to understand the story behind the history.

This book was recommended to me more than 10 years ago; I am sorry that I finally read it only within the past few weeks. Whether its excellence is owing more to Daisy Suckley and the FDR correspondence she kept hidden throughout her long (99-year) life, or to editor and compiler Geoffrey Ward (whose other Roosevelt books I am now dying to read), it should be required reading on the topic of FDR. Nothing else I have read shows us more about FDR's personal life. It is more revealing, for example, than the recent Franklin & Lucy (also worth reading, but not nearly so compelling). Roosevelt's letters to his neighbor and distant cousin Daisy are not direct transcriptions from his mind or heart---no one's are---but they may come as close as we can get. Besides this insight, we get Daisy's eyewitness account of many crucial moments in World War II and of FDR's last days. A valuable account of an extremely complicated man.

A fascinating book. If you like history, particularly the Roosevelt era, it is the day-to-day letters and diaries between Franklin Roosevelt and his fourth cousin Margaret Suckley who was present at most of the major events during the Roosevelt presidency including his death. She traveled extensively with him throughout the United States. She lived down the road from him in Hyde Park and edited his papers at the White House with him during his presidency. This book an unknown treasure.

FDR seems so lonely at the end of his life and he is.

It is stunning, STUNNING to see FDR write long, detailed, letters the likes of which hasn't been seen in ANY of his other correspondence to anyone else. He seems to have been emotionally remote and cold even to his own children, yet, here he is being as chatty and warm as he's ever been to anybody.

It's also confirmation that FDR wanted only the most compliant, undemanding of company. Groupies just thrilled to share a room with him. As one author noted, the minute you expected something in return from FDR, he dropped you.

Ward is an editor here, for the most part, but I wish he had noted that by his last years FDR had pretty much physically or emotionally worn out all those around him. Eleanor, Howe, Lehand, Hopkins, etc. Lehand - who Suckley criticizes for being too much about work to FDR - took uppers to fight off the depression and frustration of being in love with FDR. Was the timing of her collapse a coincidence?

Concurrently with this relationship with Suckley, FDR was encouraging Princess Martha to buy property in the Hyde Park area, he had convinced Dorothy Schiff to do so, now, this. Poor Eleanor. Too bad her boyfriend got married in '41.

This book deftly shows the deterioration of FDR physically, but also mentally. The memoirs of others comment on how he became remote. Reading this provides the basis for those memories. And I now understand why scientists working on the atomic bomb - that's the ATOMIC BOMB - sought appointments with Eleanor because they couldn't get to the president. How shocking is that? This point, combined with all the memoirs of how Dem party officials were asking her to ask him not to run in '44 make you realize that the pressures on the Roosevelts worked inversely at this time. The more remote FDR became, the more pressure increased on Eleanor to "talk to him about this" or whatever. It could not have been easy. It's unfortunate Goodwin didn't pick up on this.

Ward places this correspondence in excellent context.

Since the material included in the book was discovered relatively recently and shed new light on FDR's relationships, I found it very interesting! Glad that I could find it through Amazon!