Susan’s biographical/historical novels feature remarkable women–hidden figures who have not been recognized because they stand in the shadows of more widely-known people. You’ll be surprised by their stories, which Susan tells with a deep respect for the truths of their uniquely important lives. These are stories that deserve to be told, about people who deserve to be recognized for the powerful women they were. Rose Wilder Lane, Lorena Hickok, and Kay Summersby made it possible for others to do the work they did best, neither claiming credit or insisting on recognition. Still, they quietly changed the world, each in her own different way.
Coming November 7, 2023. The next project in this series is a novel about Marie Chabot, who built a house for legendary painter Georgia O’Keeffe. The Abiquiu House, now a National Historic Landmark, stands as an enduring symbol of O’Keeffe’s artful life–and of Chabot’s commitment to her friend. The novel is based on the women’s letters and other primary documents. Its working title: Someone Always Nearby (2023).
The true story of the relationship between the celebrated artist Georgia O’Keeffe and Maria Chabot, a young writer who devotes a decade of service to O’Keeffe, becoming not just her companion and household manager but the architect and builder of her famous New Mexico house/studio. An intimate glimpse of an O’Keeffe that only one woman ever fully knew, based on the 700+ letters between the two women, archived documents and historical accounts. FREE Bonus Reader’s Guide, on the website.
When former fashion model Kay Summersby is assigned to drive General Eisenhower in war-time London, they quickly become involved—in spite of Ike’s marriage to Mamie and Kay’s engagement to an American colonel. Kay and Ike struggle to keep their commitments but are increasingly drawn together. Mamie is battling jealousy, fragile health, and gossip. An engrossing and deeply sympathetic novel, based on Kay’s memoirs, Ike’s letters, wartime diaries, and extensive research in three decades of newspaper archives.
When AP political reporter Lorena Hickok–Hick–is assigned to cover Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the wife of the 1932 Democratic presidential candidate, the two women become deeply, intimately involved. Their relationship begins with mutual romantic passion, matures through stormy periods of enforced separation and competing interests, and warms into an enduring, encompassing friendship that ends only with both women’s deaths in the 1960s–all of it documented by 3300 letters exchanged over thirty years.
The Little House books, which chronicled the childhood pioneer life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, are among the most beloved books in the American literary canon. Less well known is the secret, concealed for decades, of how they came to be. Now, Susan Wittig Albert tells the fascinating story of Laura’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, an intrepid world traveler and writer who returned to her parents’ Ozark farm, Rocky Ridge, in 1928. There she began a collaboration with her mother on the pioneer stories that would captivate over sixty million readers around the world.
