Hello, all, Stephanie Marie Thornton here! My latest
historical novel,
AMERICAN
PRINCESS, reimagines the 96-year life of Alice Roosevelt, eldest daughter of
U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt and owner of the famous needlepoint pillow that
proclaimed, โIf you canโt say something good about someone, sit right here by me.โ
Obviously, Alice Roosevelt didnโt mind breaking a rule or
two. In fact, she rather reveled in shattering every rule she ever encountered!
Hereโs a list of the
Top 10 Rules Alice Roosevelt
Broke with Gustoโฆ
- Rather than calling cards
or lace fans, Alice was renowned for carrying in her silk purse a little garter snake named Emily
Spinach. (She named her pet Emily for an aunt, Spinach for the snakeโs green color.)
Sometimes Alice let the snake slither free during state dinners at the White House, which
certainly caused a ruckus!
- Alice sometimes received
a dressing down from her parents for her lack of manners and decorum, including when she
refused to remove her gloves to eat asparagus at dinner parties and also after she hunted
down serving trays to help her younger siblings slide down the stairs of the White House.
- In a time when Edwardian
young ladies were expected to be mild-mannered and well-behaved, Alice enjoyed gum-
chewing, ragtime dancing, and gambling, so much so that Theodore Roosevelt had to ask the
media to suppress photographs of her placing bets with bookies.
- While traveling on a
goodwill tour of the Far East, Alice jumped fully clothed into the shipโs swimming pool. Many
years later, when Bobby Kennedy commented on the scandal, Alice cheekily replied, โIt only
would have been scandalous if Iโd been naked!โ
- As a young woman, Alice
revolted against the unspoken rule that women shouldnโt drive cars. Instead, she landed in the
papers for her speeding alongside socialite Lila Paul and later purchased her own roadster,
much to her fatherโs chagrin.
- Alice refused to play the
Washington D.C. game of calling cards, (which was ridiculously complicated with secret codes
that involved folding down certain calling card corners when delivering them before social
call), instead claiming that anyone who cared to visit could come to her. And they did!
- Hosting her massive
wedding at the White House, Alice complained of the weight of her headpiece and veil.
However, after the ceremony, she recovered her usual verve in time for the cake cuttingโand
wound up borrowing a sabre from a military aide to cut the cake!
- Once married, Alice split
her time between New York, Washington D.C. and Cincinnati. Due to her mother-in-lawโs
cantankerous presence, Alice loathed Cincinnati, calling it โCinci-nasty.โ However, she did
appreciate that that cityโs zoo named a baby elephant after her!
- Alice didnโt get along with
First Lady Nellie Taft, so when Theodore Roosevelt left office in January 1909, Alice planted a
voodoo doll of Nellie in one of the White House gardens. Nellie never seemed to suffer from
the voodoo, but the day of Taftโs inauguration did see a terrible winter storm hit DC!
- During World War II, Alice
feuded with her famous cousins, FDR and Eleanor. Angered at Eleanorโs sabotage of Aliceโs
brotherโs political career and shocked at FDRโs unprecedented fourth term in office, Alice
called him a despot and compared him to Hitler.
Trust me, these are just a smattering of Aliceโs wildest
escapades! (Thereโs definitely a reason that her father was quoted as saying, โI can either run
the country or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both.โ)
If ever there was a woman before her time, it was Alice
Roosevelt, who with her caustic wit and devil-may-care attitude managed to shatter so many
of societyโs rules. I absolutely loved writing about her and I hope you enjoy reading her story!
A sweeping novel from renowned author Stephanie Marie Thornton...
Alice may be the president's daughter, but she's nobody's darling. As bold as her signature
color Alice Blue, the gum-chewing, cigarette- smoking, poker-playing First Daughter discovers
that the only way for a woman to stand out in Washington is to make waves--oceans of them.
With the cannyย sophistication of the savviest politician on the Hill, Alice uses her celebrity to
her advantage, testing the limits of her power and the seductive thrill of political
entanglements.
But Washington, DC is rife with heartaches and betrayals, and when Alice falls hard for a
smooth-talking congressman it will take everything this rebel has to emerge triumphant and
claim her place as an American icon. As Alice soldiers through the devastation of two world
wars and brazens out a cutting feud with her famous Roosevelt cousins, it's no wonder
everyone in the capital refers to her as the Other Washington Monument--and Alice intends to
outlast them all.
Historical | Celebrity
[Berkley, On Sale: March 12, 2019, Trade Size / e-Book, ISBN:
9780451490902 / eISBN: 9780451490919]
A must-read
book about the president's daughter, Alice Roosevelt!
Retelling the stories of History's Forgotten Women
Stephanie Thornton is a writer and high school history teacher who has been obsessed with
infamous women from history since she was twelve.
Her first two novels,
The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora and
Daughter of the Gods: A Novel of Ancient Egypt reimagine the lives of two of
history's forgotten women: Theodora of the Byzantine Empire and Pharaoh Hatshepsut.
Her third and fourth books center around the women who stood behind the greatest
conquerors the world has ever seen.
The Tiger Queens is the story of Genghis Khan's
wife and daughters, while
The Conqueror's Wife tells of the women who both loved and
hated Alexander the Great. With her love of the ancient world, she also joined the H Team to
help pen a collaborative novel,
Song of War: A Novel of Troy in which put a new
spin on the story of Cassandra, King Priam's cursed seer of a daughter.
She lives with her husband and daughter in Alaska.
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