Reading - But What Do You Call It?

The genre is new to me and it is this:  A biography is treated like fiction.  Dialogue included as well as motives, reactions and every day life.  It certainly can make "history" interesting and the scholars that explored and wrote this genre all claim massive amounts of time doing research (or so they say.)

"That Churchill Woman" by Stephani Barron, $28   376 pages

This particular Churchill woman referenced is Jennie (Jerome) Churchill, an American, Winston Churchill's mother.  Jennie and Randolph got engaged after a 3-day courtship.  ("O impetuous fools!") However both sets of parents objected (Jennie was 19) and dowry negotiations dragged on for something like another six months.  

Better both should have forgotten all about it.  Randolph was gay and died of 4th stage syphilis due to an unwise liaison in his past.   He was 61.   Jennie claimed to her lover, the dashing Count Charles Kinsky, of Austria, that she and Lord Randy did it once - the honeymoon - resulting in the birth of Winston. Thus she was not at risk for syphilis (and neither was Kinsky)  which had arrived much later in the marriage.   

The couple's second son was widely believed to have had a different father than Randy, denied by Jennie.  Jennie, understandably had a vast number of … flirtations.   Randolph said the child was his issue.  Matter settled. 

Jennie and Kinski went back and forth in their affair.  They loved each other but she refused to abandon all and run away with him after she discovered the little matter of 4th stage syphilis.  She said that she had married for better or worse.  Instead when his madness became impossible to handle, she took him and his doctor on a round-Asia tour to get him out of the public eye that ended abruptly when he became so ill, it was feared he would die on the ship.  A coffin was ordered, stowed below and accompanied the little party all the way back home.  But he died at home with Winston and Jennie present.

All and all, it was a fairly riveting read and I recommend it.