The Diamond Eye

by Kate Quinn

He hopes she will be, not only because he wants his second front in Europe—and has been facing opposition to it given our setbacks in the Pacific—but because he has a most unusual liking for useful women. He collects us, and what a varied constellation of females we are. The shy, awkward wife he turned so efficiently into his eyes and ears . . . his impervious secretary Missy LeHand, who could organize that second front as efficiently as she organizes everything else in the White House . . . his labor secretary, Frances Perkins, the iron hand behind his New Deal, who dispatches strong men reeling from cabinet meetings . . . Franklin’s women. He collects us, admires us, hones us, and then he does not hesitate to use us up, burning through us body and soul until we flame out. If some part of us rises up in silent protest at such treatment—as it does sometimes in me, for things between us are not always easy—then it dies unspoken when we see that he burns himself up no less ruthlessly. We would all die for him, because he is killing himself for all of us.