Charismatic leaders have a way of flying too close to the fire. This is the chronicle of the secret romance between Hale and Freeman revealed for the first time through 3,000 of their love letters (1884-1909), written partly in code. The Reverend Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) was one of the most revered moral and thought leaders of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and yet, during twenty of his last twenty-five years, he lived a double life. From the first celebratory biography of Hale by his namesake son, however, through two later biographies, Hale's long marriage to the former Emily...

Charismatic leaders have a way of flying too close to the fire. This is the chronicle of the secret romance between Hale and Freeman revealed for the first time through 3,000 of their love letters (1884-1909), written partly in code. The Reverend Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) was one of the most revered moral and thought leaders of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and yet, during twenty of his last twenty-five years, he lived a double life. From the first celebratory biography of Hale by his namesake son, however, through two later biographies, Hale's long marriage to the former Emily...