Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd: Eleanor's Rival, FDR's Other Love

What more could there be to know about FDR, given how exhaustively his life has been written about? As it happens, there is more and that focuses on Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the queen of her Washington social circle, later FDR's friend and love-and Eleanor's rival, as the title of Christine Totten's work points out.



In Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd: Eleanor's Rival, FDR's Other Love, Totten presents a carefully structured case for a deep and lasting but chaste love between Lucy and FDR, against the prevailing view that they were clandestine lovers. Totten's research into the personal memories of the Rutherfurd family and the public holdings of the FDR Library establishes a new rich understanding of Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd--her early life, her education, and her role in the social and political scene in Washington.



This work gives Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd her due, as a woman in her own right as well as FDR's valued soul mate and friend.

Christine M. Totten is a retired Professor of Communications and former University Press Officer at the University of Heidelberg. In 1949, Totten was invited, among other distinguished German intellectuals and professors who had opposed the Nazi regime, by the U.S. State Department to re-educate the German people in American customs and ideologies. Eventually, she became a professor at Clarion University of Pennsylvania in Modern Languages and Cultures. She spent many years researching the impact of Sara Delano Roosevelt on her son FDR. Working on the biography of FDR's mother, Dr. Totten was led to look into the relationship between FDR and Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the topic of this work.