In 2016, there was renewed interest when Eleanor and Hick's relationship became the subject of a non-fiction work by Susan Quinn. Later, historians such as Blanche Weisen Cook (whom Bloom credits as an inspiration) began to raise questions, revealing earlier dismissals of the relationship as homophobic and prudish. In the 1980s, Eleanor Roosevelt's biographer Doris Faber published a selection of the nearly 3,000 letters between the First Lady and 'Hick' held in the archives at Hyde Park, but the close and clearly romantic relationship between the two women was dismissed as friendship. Based on much research, Bloom's historical fiction is neither gossipy nor incendiary: in fact, White Houses is a tender, heart-warming exploration of a hidden but profound love. Set during the Great Depression, when "stockbrokers were jumping out of windows and farmers were killing their families and hanging themselves from oak trees", Amy Bloom's vivid reimagining of the relationship between the Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok subtly draws out the class differences between the two, interweaving their contrasting histories with the cultural tensions of pre-war America. Although it was something of an open secret in the White House during the Franklin Roosevelt years, the first lady's long-standing love affair with reporter Lorena Hickok has been the subject of much (predictable) controversy.
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