Review: Vivien Horler
White Houses by Amy Bloom (Granta)
Lorena Alice Hickok was a rare thing in the US in the early 1930s, a hard-news woman journalist.
She covered Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s election campaign which saw him and his wife Eleanor entering the White House in 1932.
Hickok, who was known to be a lesbian, became a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, moving into the White House, which led to her resignation from her reporting job with Associated Press as she was too close to the First Family.
The women travelled together, and wrote each other passionate letters – more than 3 000 letters between the pair are held at the Franklin D Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in New York State. Continue reading