FDR's Secret Love

Sara Roosevelt (left) with FDR and Eleanor, 1920. She was as shocked at the idea of their divorcing as she was at their marrying.

In the end, the three parties in the triangle behaved according to character, Eleanor self-sacrificing, Franklin self-preserving, Lucy lovelorn but resilient, as subsequent events would prove. Nineteen years later, when Eleanor recounted the year 1918 in her first autobiography, she wrote at length of Franklin's mission to Europe, of 18-hour shifts at the canteen, of her desperately ill husband being carried into his mother's house, even of Anna winning a German shepherd puppy in a lottery. But of the near destruction of her marriage, not a word.

It is a tantalizing question: If Sara had not threatened to cut off her son, if Franklin had divorced Eleanor and remarried, and if indeed FDR's political career had ended, how differently might the history of the 20th century have read?

Adapted from Franklin & Lucy: President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherfurd, and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life by Joseph E. Persico. Copyright © 2008 by Joseph E. Persico. Published by Random House Inc.