The Three Graces of Val-Kill changes the way we think about
Eleanor Roosevelt. Emily Wilson examines what she calls the most
formative period in Roosevelt's life, from 1922 to 1936, when she
cultivated an intimate friendship with Marion Dickerman and Nancy
Cook, who helped her build a cottage on the Val-Kill Creek in Hyde
Park on the Roosevelt family land. In the early years, the three
women--the "three graces," as Franklin Delano Roosevelt called
them--were nearly inseparable and forged a female-centered
community for each other, for family, and for New York's
progressive women. Examining this network of close female friends
gives readers a more comprehensive picture of the Roosevelts and
Eleanor's burgeoning independence in the years that marked
Franklin's rise to power in politics.
Wilson takes care to show all the nuances and complexities of the
women's relationship, which blended the political with the
personal. Val-Kill was not only home to Eleanor Roosevelt but also
a crucial part of how she became one of the most admired American
political figures of the twentieth century. In Wilson's telling,
she emerges out of the shadows of monumental histories and
documentaries as a woman in search of herself.