Kindred Souls: The Friendship Of Eleanor Roosevelt And David Gurewitsch [Hardcover]

Edna P. Gurewitsch (Author), Geoffrey C. Ward (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 24, 2002

In a letter to David Gurewitsch, Eleanor Roosevelt's personal physician and friend during the last fifteen years of her life, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote, "Above all others, you are the one to whom my heart is tied...." This defines the intense relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and David Gurewitsch-- friends who often traveled and entertained together and eventually, after his marriage to Edna Perkel, bought and shared a town house in Manhattan.

Their private friendship, a companionship they both treasured, has always intrigued historians, but not much was known about it. David kept diaries and took thousands of photographs, but he never publicly discussed their time together. Now, for the first time, his wife, Edna, has decided to reveal their story and hers after she married into their complicated relationship. Reading David's diaries and the hundreds of letters that he and Mrs. Roosevelt exchanged over the years, and then reflecting on her own life after the death of her husband, enabled Edna finally to write this story. She sheds new light on Mrs. Roosevelt's very private journey of self-discovery as she gained the confidence and knowledge to follow her own personal and political convictions: visiting Khrushchev at his home in Yalta, working on Adlai Stevenson's campaign, being charmed by the young Senator John Kennedy into giving her support for his presidential candidacy, and above all inspiring the love and respect of people all over the world for her compassion, eloquence, and devotion to humanity.

Given her husband's unique role as doctor and confidant to Mrs. Roosevelt, Edna Gurewitsch draws on his insights and her own as a close friend to offer us a very human and inspiring portrait of this complex woman. Perceived as a strong and deeply caring person, which she was, Mrs. Roosevelt also struggled terribly with loneliness and jealousy and a need to transcend her sometimes overwhelming feelings of inadequacy. Her capacity for friendship was enormous, and Edna Gurewitsch describes what it was like to be on the receiving end of her exceptional thoughtfulness-- the carefully chosen gifts left on doorsteps, the generous notes, and the open conversations she welcomed with a humility that never trumpeted her own virtues or called attention to herself as one of the great minds of the twentieth century.

Kindred Souls is filled with personal and unpublished letters from Mrs. Roosevelt. Sometimes chatty and fact-filled, but more often heartfelt and passionate, these letters reveal her yearnings and vulnerabilities as well as her comings and goings, her personal as well as her global concerns. And yet they are always balanced by her special dignity and probity. The book also includes thirty-two pages of never-before-seen photographs taken by David Gurewitsch. Combined with the author's own memories and observations, Kindred Souls is a unique, intimate look at three friends and their extraordinary lives.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"You know without my telling you that I love you as I love and have never loved anyone else," wrote Eleanor Roosevelt to her doctor, David Gurewitsch, in 1955. It was an extraordinary declaration by the world's most famous woman, one that has intrigued historians and biographers for decades. Now the full story behind this relationship is revealed by an unlikely source David's wife. Gurewitsch writes that her husband and Mrs. Roosevelt first met in 1944. Shortly thereafter, David became her personal physician, and a friendship blossomed that endured until Mrs. Roosevelt's death in 1962. It was, Gurewitsch admits, a curious friendship. David was 18 years younger and "uncommonly handsome" facts that made some Roosevelt family members "uneasy" about the relationship. But Gurewitsch dispels any questions about an intimate affair. Mrs. Roosevelt did possess "romantic feelings" toward David, she writes, but these were controlled by the pair "maturely and honorably." David frequently traveled with Mrs. Roosevelt; and after her marriage to David, the author was a constant companion as well. The trio even lived together in a house on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Thus, Gurewitsch literally had a living room seat from which to observe Mrs. Roosevelt's uniquely diverse life: mother, party hostess, social activist, Democratic spokesperson, world diplomat. It is chiefly for these observations, coupled with excerpts from the Gurewitsch-Roosevelt letters, that this book is valuable. With admiration for her subject, Gurewitsch has significantly expanded our understanding of the last years of the 20th century's great American woman. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

During the final 15 years of Eleanor Roosevelt's celebrated life, she nurtured an intense personal relationship with A. David Gurewitsch, a man 20 years her junior who was first her physician and later became her surrogate son. This intimate and poignant story of two psychological outsiders validating each other's needs is recounted by Gurewitsch's widow, who herself became Eleanor Roosevelt's close friend during the last four years of ER's life. Gurewitsch, born in Russia of Jewish parents, was reared in Germany. In addition to bouts of statelessness and tuberculosis in the 1930s and 1940s, he grew up fatherless like ER. Moreover, just as Eleanor was ostracized emotionally as "granny" by her beautiful socialite mother before her early death, David Gurewitsch's demanding mother abandoned him early while she pursued her medical degree abroad. Eleanor served as his "adopted" mother, and David served as her ideal son and friend. A dozen years into this special relationship, the author and David were wed in ER's living room. A New York art dealer, the young bride was thrust into the public whirlwind Eleanor generated. Her memoir offers numerous personal insights into the public institution of ER. In many ways, the second half of the memoir becomes a story of adult love and friendship among three mature characters. Highly recommended. William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (January 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312286988
• ISBN-13: 978-0312286989
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,198,932 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #95 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( R ) > Roosevelt, Eleanor

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Adding to the ER mystic, July 24, 2004

By 

Cecelia E Connally (Cleveland, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kindred Souls (Paperback)

I certainly do not claim to be an expert on the life of Eleanor Roosevelt. However, I have read my fair share of books on her life and that of FDR. As a result, I thought I was aware of ER's circle of friends and the people who shared a close relationship with her. When I discovered KINDRED SOULDS - THE FRIENDSHIP OF ELEANOR ROOSEVELT AND DAVID GUREWITSCH on audiocassete at my local library it came as a welcome surprise. David Gurewitsch was a name that was new to me.

Edna P. Gurewitsch's 2002 book is a memorable history of the relationship between the author's husband, Dr. David Gurewitsch and ER. Based mainly on letters between ER and Dr. Gurewitsch and journals along with Edna's memories, the book presents a charming portrait of Mrs. Roosevelt as a pragmatic, driven, thoughtful, quirky, emotional and sometimes difficult friend. The relationship that developed first beween ER and David, who was ER's physician, and later with the addition of Edna when they married, makes for an interesting insight into the dynamics of this unique set of human relationship. Did ER really love David, a man many years her junior, and resent the intrusion of Edna? Did she finally come to accept this "other woman" in a strange threesome in order to maintain her relationship with David? These are questions that no one can answer and one that the prospective reader can ponder for themselves.

The Roosevelt children do not fair wll throughout the book, which covers the last years of Mrs. Roosevelt's life. They come across as seemingly lacking concern for their mother, going to her when they were in financial straights, especially Elliot and living lives where they believed that the society owes them a great deal because of their place in history as Roosevelts. It becomes almost trite to talk about the result of a dysfunctional family, but it's the only thing that seems to fit after listening to Edna describe ER's relationship with her children. Surprisingly, the references to FDR are few and far between. Edna speaks from the prospective of those who argue that ER took on a new persona as her own person after her husband's death and moved on with her life.

As I said, I don't claim to be an expert on ER, however, I know that she was extremely close to Joseph Lash. Then there is the rumored relationship with her one time driver, state trooper,Earl Miller, both of whom were younger than ER. There was ER's life long friendship (allegedly lesbian) with Lorena Hitchock and her interesting relationship with other women. And these are just the ones that I remember.

As a prolific letter writer ER left a great legacy in her writing. The thousands of letters addressed to "my dearest friend" with comments of "how much I love and miss you" were left behind for historians now to consider. Are we now judging her late Victorian style by 21st century standards? Were these loving comments a result of ER's loneliness and her desire to be loved in return? Only a psychologist can figure that one out.

ER clearly had a close relationsip with Edna and David. Such is evidenced by the fact that she chose to live the last years of her life with them. She traveled with them, spent weekends and evenings with them, and basically made them her family, based on Edna's account. Although Edna talks about ER's many circle of friends, how they also interacted in her life or spent time with her, I came away feeling that there was a part of ER's life that was left out in this particular picture. According to Edna, ER's life was totally encompassed in that of her and her husband to the exclusion of others.

For those who know a good deal about Eleanor Roosevelt, this is an interesting read. As I stated, I listened to it on audiocassette. The reader did a good job of varying her voice but I feel that there were several mispronunciations of proper names. The work included interesting political insights of mid 20th century politicians, especially Adlai Stevenson and JFK. But fitting the Gurewitsch's into the greater picture of ER's life is, I believe, still open for debate. In hindsight history is always reveaaed in the light most favorable to the writer, especially one who claims to have the close personal friends of a famous person. However, I would love to hear other views of the relationship between David Gurewitsch, Edna Gurewitsch and Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. I'm suspect that there is another side.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Generous, enlightening & uplifting, November 14, 2002

By 

Reader "kpcetal" (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kindred Souls: The Friendship Of Eleanor Roosevelt And David Gurewitsch (Hardcover)

This is an astonishingly generous book that gives a different look at the real life of a larger-than-life woman. Mrs. Gurewitsch was (apparantly) completely unthreatened by the strong, deep, and intimate (in the non-sexual sense of the word)relationship between her husband and the redoubtable Mrs. Roosevelt. She limns the outlines of the relationship gently, with great compassion for Mrs. Roosevelt and frank admiration for her many accomplishments. Still, this is not hagiography- Mrs. Gurewitsch tells her story with simplicity and affection, but is still clear eyed about her subjects human foibles.

Through her portrait, and through the extracts of letters to David, it becomes clear that the infamous Lorena Hickok letters must be read in the context of an era (and a woman), in which language was rather more effusive.

Like so many things about Eleanor Roosevelt, the book is a bit bittersweet, but she clearly had made her peace with life, and in the end Mrs. Gurewitsch has repaid Mrs. Roosevelt's trust and friendship. The book is not a comprehensive biography, but you may inspired enough by what you read that you go read one!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lovefest, February 22, 2005

By 

Cynthia K. Robertson (beverly, new jersey USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kindred Souls: The Friendship Of Eleanor Roosevelt And David Gurewitsch (Hardcover)

In 1945, David Gurewitsch became Eleanor Roosevelt's personal physician. Within two years, they became close friends, traveling companions and confidants. Edna Gurewitsch chronicles the relationship between her husband and Mrs. Roosevelt in Kindred Souls: The Devoted Friendship of Eleanor Roosevelt and Dr. David Gurewitsch.

Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the most intelligent, gifted, powerful, energetic yet humble women of the 20th Century. But despite all these attributes, she suffered from a definite lack of confidence in her abilities. This lack of self-esteem had several roots including her miserable childhood, her insensitive husband, her domineering mother-in-law and the shabby treatment she suffered by her five self-centered, spoiled and undisciplined children. To compensate for this serious lacking, Mrs. Roosevelt surrounded herself with an orbit of friends who served as her surrogate family. Mrs. Roosevelt demanded much from her friends, but rewarded them with love, loyalty, devotion and generosity. Her list included Esther Lape, Marion Dickerman, Nancy Cook, Lorena Hickock, Joe Lash, and others. Dr. Gurewitsch was her closest friend for the last 15 years of her life. Right before her death, she wrote to him "above all others, you are the one to whom my heart is tied." Once David married the author, they became a threesome. They even shared a house together until Mrs. Roosevelt's death in 1962.

Edna Gurewitsch's book can best be described as a lovefest. Her fawning descriptions of her "perfect" husband become very nauseating very quickly. If there are any warts exposed in Kindred Souls, they belong to Mrs. Roosevelt. She could be demanding and emotionally needy at times, and often revealed a jealousy toward those she felt were usurping her attention. There were often intrigues between her children and her friends, and even among her friends, as each group vied for Mrs. Roosevelt's love in return. Her children were the worst, as they often found themselves on the outside looking in.

For a Roosevelt fan, there is not much new information to be had, except for the background of Dr. Gurewitsch (which may be interesting, but is not the reason I purchased this book). For most readers, I'd recommend skipping Kindred Souls and reading instead one of Joseph Lash's Roosevelt biographies, or better yet, Blanche Wiesen Cook's two-part biography on Mrs. Roosevelt (which I understand will eventually be six books in all).