Ruth Bryan Owen

This attentive and loving memoir, written by her youngest daughter, provides an intimate portrait of a remarkable woman who became a genuine celebrity during the 1920s and 1930s, when the cult of celebrity was just taking shape. She lived an active life of public speaking and international government service, published several books, and taught college classes, all the while raising her children and providing support for them and her invalid husband. Long before Second Wave Feminism, she was an icon of women's capacity to manage both a public and a private life. Her life story encompassed two world wars, the presidencies of Harry S. Truman and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and involved such public figures as Fannie Hurst, Sam Rayburn, and William Randolph Hearst. Yet at the peak of her career, seeking relief from the strains of public life, she made the mistake of marrying a man who put an end to her diplomatic and political life.

A woman of substance, Ruth Bryan Owen played an important role in American politics in an age when such involvement was rare, and thus serves as an early figure in the history of American feminism. But above all, the book reveals the private life of a very human woman, with rich and sometimes difficult relationships, who struggled to balance her personal needs to be loved and cared for with her desire to make the world a better and fairer place for all.