Eleanor Roosevelt’s father Elliott, younger brother of President Theodore Roosevelt, inherited a fortune and squandered it on a rich and idle life. A heavy drinker, he was exiled to Virginia and rarely visited his daughter. She was jealous of the servant girl with whom he fathered a son. Elliott died of a seizure days after jumping out a window. The future First Lady never got over his loss but developed a compassion that benefitted the nation and the world. For the story of another bad dad, read The Great Stork Derby, based on an actual contest in which a husband pressures his wife to have babies for cash and, fifty years later, learns the true value of fatherhood. Read more about the book in NOVELS.
