Beverly B. reviewed on 11/30/2009 + 7 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 3

This is an enjoyable book that I had to get for book club reading. It's focus is on the women who were wives, daughters, etc to the men who are most prominent in the history of our country. It was eye-opening to see what kind of hardships these women dealt with even though they were for the most part upper class women. Many had little or no education. They bore children every two years and many of those children died from a variety of illnesses. The men were often away doing business, so the women had to manage the farm or business that the husband or father left behind. Often a woman was alone, carrying a child on her hip, nursing an sick child, and giving directions for farm or business chores, making meals, etc. It was a difficult life, but something that generation was accustomed to. In exchange they got to provide political insights to their husbands, lovers, fathers and brothers something many of them were happy to do.
The book does get a bit repetitious since it moves through history accounting for one "Founding Mother" after another and they all seem to merge into one after a while having the same heavy duties, and same sometimes loving, sometimes not so loving men in their lives. One has to have patience to stick it through to the end of the book.

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