While reporting on Franklin Roosevelt's 1932 campaign, Lorena "Hick" Hickok meets Eleanor Roosevelt. Having grown up poor in South Dakota and reinvented herself as a prominent woman reporter in America, Hick isn't instantly charmed by the idealistic, patrician Eleanor. But then, as her connection with the future first lady deepens into intimacy, Hick moves into the White House, where her status as "first friend" is an open secret, as are FDR's own lovers. In Amy Bloom's compelling evocation of some of the era's grandest figures, Hick comes to know Franklin not only as a great president and an irresistible friend, but as a complicated rival for the love of her life.

"Profoundly affecting.... Bloom's Hick is frank, funny, and irreverent.... By seeing the Roosevelt era through the most unlikely of outsiders-turned-insider, [Bloom] brings a hidden chapter of East Wing history to life."—Boston Globe

"A remarkably intimate and yet informative novel of the secret, scandalous love of Eleanor Roosevelt and her longtime friend and companion Lorena Hickok, who relates the tale in her own, quite wonderful voice."—Joyce Carol Oates