Chapter One
New York City
Summer 1909

My family built this country with muddy hands and a spark of madness. On my grandfather's side, we were brickmakers, shoveling clay out of pits along the Damariscotta River in Maine. On my grandmother's side, we were rebels, writing pamphlets against taxation without representation and taking up muskets against the redcoats.

Alas, just like some bricks break in the kiln, so, too, did some of my kin crack in the fire of the American Revolution. Madness runs in families, they say. Courage too. And I wasn't entirely sure which of those inheritable traits was most responsible for my decision as a young woman to move to New York City, where I'd be living in Hell's Kitchen, one of the most notoriously violent tenement slums.

The neighborhood-insofar as one could call it that-was so much under the thumb of gang leaders that policemen couldn't enter without fear of being pelted with stones by lookouts who then escaped down the drainpipes into a maze of rat-infested back alleys.

Yet here I was-with my lace parasol in one hand, traveling valise in the other-jostling past shabby storefronts with soot-stained awnings, noisy saloons selling three-cent whiskey, and a rogue's gallery of ruffians brandishing penknives, looking to separate me from my valuables.

Fortunately, I hadn't any valuables on my person unless one were to count my fashionably ornamented hat and the few pennies I hid in my lace-up boot.

No doubt, I made a curious sight in the tenements, where strangers stood out. I also had an unfortunate moon face with dimples that gave the impression of doe-eyed youth even though I was twenty-nine years of age. And because my previous employment at the Philadelphia Research and Protective Association hadn't afforded a salary generous enough to pay for more than the occasional banana sandwich, I was thin enough to sometimes be confused with a teenaged girl.

But I wasn't a lost little naïf. I had learned from hard-won experience that in places such as this-where the foul odors from the docks mixed with the smell of horse dung and unwashed humanity in the streets-it was best to stride with a purposeful gait, keeping fixed upon my face an expression that said, Ill-intended gentlemen will very much regret trifling with me.

I'm convinced that stride and expression are all that account for how I arrived unmolested at the tall wrought iron stairway entrance of the brick settlement house on West Forty-Sixth Street.

Amid surrounding squalor, the settlement house was surprisingly well kept, its front stoop graced with pots of scarlet chrysanthemums. This place was meant to be a sanctuary for the poor where they could bathe, seek nursing care, or attend classes. And no sooner had I approached that sanctuary than did the curious, cold, and calculating looks I got on the street melt into something a little more civilized.

When I rang the bell, the supervisor was waiting for me. She introduced herself as Miss Mathews and ushered me inside while scrutinizing my fashionably narrow skirt with a whiff of disdain.

The dour-faced Miss Mathews was herself dressed all in black like social agitators of the older generation, adhering to the S-shaped corset. And I noticed her manner was just as constrained when she sniffed and said, very stiffly, "Welcome to Hartley House, Miss Perkins."

"Thank you," I chirped cheerfully, taking in the lovely foyer, then following her into a little office, where I sat at the edge of my seat, gloves folded in my lap, the heels of my lace-up boots lined up primly as she reviewed my file. "I'm very much looking forward to my time here at Hartley House."

"You come to us highly recommended," she said, as if she couldn't possibly imagine why. "And I see you have a fine education. Mount Holyoke College. Wharton Business School. And now New York's School of Philanthropy. Our understanding is that you're here on a fellowship from the Russell Sage Foundation."

Excerpted from Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray. Copyright © 2024 by Stephanie Dray. Excerpted by permission of Berkley Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.