In 1921, FDR had just lost an election as VP candidate with Governor Cox against Harding, he was overcome by an illness that left him paralyzed from the waist down, and his marriage was on the rocks. He retired to his home in Hyde Park with his wife Eleanor and an ever-present advisor, Louis Howe. With her signature insight, Julie Fenster presents a vivid, behind-the-scenes portrait of the world of the Roosevelts in a critical time, taking readers inside this peculiar arrangement and revealing how this intimate friendship lead to the resurgence of FDR. Eleanor Roosevelt, too, would never be the same again.

Their son Elliott said, "The person who was most responsible for the development of my mother's personality was Louis Howe, as he was of my father. He was a man that gave my father the iron will and the ability to move ahead politically, which I don't think he would have ever done on his own. Louis Howe was probably the greatest influence on both my father and my mother's lives."