American Princess

American Princess by Stephanie Marie Thornton    488 pages

I know it’s only the second week of January 2019, but I’m going to make a prognostication: “American Princess” is going to be one of 2019’s must read books. I haven’t felt such an intensely intimate reading experience since the 2013 publication of Melanie Benjamin’s “The Aviator’s Wife.”

“American Princess” tackles Alice Roosevelt Longworth, oldest daughter of Teddy, cousin to Eleanor and Franklin. Readers are taken inside one of America’s most intriguing characters. She was so popular that song and a color (like Alice Blue)) was named after her. She adored her Cuban pearls.

The story opens in 1970. Alice is being prepped for surgery. She knows she’s lead a life that most people only dream of, but that doesn’t mean it had been easy.

Her mother and paternal grandmother died on the same day, hours apart, in 1884, when she was two days old. Teddy was so distraught that immediately after the funerals, he packed his bags and left for the Dakota Badlands. Her aunt tried to get him to hold her, but he pushed her away, saying I can’t. She has her eyes…I just can’t. Alice spent the rest of Teddy’s life “trying to clamber onto his lap.” Eventually, the two became good friends and confidents.

Readers will learn that no-so-lady-like Alice, the snarky, “gun-chewing, cigarette-smoking, poker-playing First Daughter,” had a mind of her own and wasn’t afraid to speak it. Readers get to experience the highs and lows of a high-profile life, her world travels, her marriage to a swashbuckling congressman, the birth of her daughter, her affairs her love for her father and the bond they ultimately shared, and her keen insight into politics.

After Teddy’s death in 1919, Alice led the campaign against America’s membership of the League of Nations. So politically savvy was she that the Republican Party briefly considered her for vice-president on Herbert Hoover’s ticket in 1928.

There is so much detail in this epic story that it feels as if Alice has written a memoir. Author Thornton must have spent decades researching Alice’s life. One of my favorite parts was the epigraph that begins Part 3: “If you can’t say something good about someone sit right here by me.” That pretty well sums up Alice’s unreserved personality.

Alice lived to be 96 years old, dying in 1980. She had seen sixteen president’s and was often called Washington’s other monument.  “American Princess” is a tribute to Alice’s life. I enjoyed this novel so much that it receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.