It's early in 1935, and Washington, D.C. is enjoying a mild winter. But from the bleak expression on the face of Eleanor Roosevelt's young friend Jessica Dee, as she sits across from the First Lady in a shapeless prison dress, Mrs. Roosevelt can almost believe that a frigid chill has enveloped the nation's capital. Jessica, a beautiful young Jewish woman who was smuggled out of Poland as a child, has been accused of murder. One of her lovers, Sargent Peavy, a member of the Federal Treasury Board, has been found dead of a gunshot wound in his Georgetown townhouse.Despite the evidence against her, Mrs. Roosevelt refuses to believe that Jessica could be guilty of murder. Not only is she a personal friend, but Jessica has proven invaluable to Mrs. Roosevelt's husband, the President, by passing along information gleaned while working as a secretary in the office of FDR's most potent political rival. Senator Huey Long, the Kingfish. Determined to clear Jessica's name by solving the crime, Mrs. Roosevelt uncovers a trail of deceit and greed that leads all the way to the privileged world of Boston banking and the dark underworld of the Irish mob, her every move shadowed by a notorious female assassin whose calling card is a fiery mane of hair. Read Less