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Slick and the Duchess: The Teapot Dome Scandal and the Death of Warren Harding
By John W. Ravage
ISBN-10: 1598006703
ISBN-13: 978-1598006704
If you are a lover of historical fiction then I would highly recommend this book. The author, John Ravage, did an exceptional job of researching the Teapot Dome Scandal, Warren Harding’s term in office and the lives of the people embroiled in or surrounding this time period.
I have to take my hat off to a master. Slick and the Duchess was one of the most interesting reads I have had in a long, long time. When I started to read the book I thought that some of the main characters like Dieter Friedrich and his “unwitting” sidekick, Bubbles (or was it Mary?), were figments of John Ravage’s imagination but nice tools to tell the story. I later find that these characters were real people and had played their own hands in the history of this scandalous ordeal. Touché!
John Ravage has succeeded in writing believable intimate conversations between historical figures, conversations which may or may not have ever taken place, and he has filled in the gaps in this entire story, unfolding it chapter by chapter – generally switching back and forth between the vastly different worlds of Colorado and Wyoming on one side and Washington, D.C. on the other. We meet the millionaire oilman Harry Sinclair, owner of the Denver Post – Fredrick Bonfils, General Pershing, Vice President Calvin Coolidge, Albert Fall, Gaston Means, Harry Daugherty, Edward Doheny and other big names of the time as well as cameo appearances from other famous notables. In the end Ravage spins and unwinds the web as he goes along. He ties it all in at the close of the book but at the same time leaving you to decide whether the President was or wasn’t a guilty party in the Teapot Dome Scandal and whether or not he actually died of natural causes.
I especially have to commend Ravage on the work he put together in describing the personal relationship between Warren Harding and his wife Florence Kling Harding, known to her husband as “Duchess”. The author gives a great insight to Duchess’s own personal strengths and weaknesses and paints Warren Harding as a terribly flawed figure – perhaps fatally flawed.
I not only give Slick and the Duchess a high approval I also look forward to what is next from this gifted writer!
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