What if?
Author imagines what would happen if FDR's private life became public
Byline: Elizabeth Slowik / ©The Grand Rapids Press
Publication Date: 2/6/2005

In Tim Steele's parallel universe, Gerald R. Ford of Michigan is elected president -- twice.

But that's at the end of Steele's book, "The Affairs of State," a historical novel that gives a titillating twist to the very real administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

FDR was beloved by Americans for leading them out of the Depression and through most of World War II. What the public didn't know about was the love affairs in which he and his popular First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, both dabbled. Nor did the public know that Roosevelt, stricken with polio at age 39, used a wheelchair.

So Steele, who once ran for Congress on the radical platform of politely discussing the issues, asked, "What if?" What if the public knew the truth about FDR and Eleanor? The result was his first published novel.

"I love history," says Steele, of Grand Rapids. Since his stint as a WLAV radio disc jockey two decades ago, Steele has run an audio-visual production company, done freelance writing (including for The Press), and worked at other radio stations.

His story's narrator is Michael Audray, an Edward R. Murrow-meets-Jerry Springer style newsman in Washington D.C. who hits the airwaves on a new radio network in 1940. Audray quickly lands a daily interview show that captures an unprecedented number of listeners by asking celebrities and politicians for salacious details about their personal lives. Then, during an FDR press conference, he audaciously asks the president about the affairs, launching a radio and newspaper feeding frenzy. It leads to plot twists and turns worthy of Colorado's Million Dollar Highway.

Inspired by the 1987 photo of Donna Rice sitting on the lap of presidential hopeful Gary Hart, Steele says he got the idea for the book during President Clinton's impeachment and wrote it a few years later. He sent it to a single publishing house, Twenty First Century Publishers of London, which accepted it within a month.

"The book is either really good or they were really hard up for titles," Steele jokes.

He relied on Google searches for most of his research.

"There's a lot of historical fact in it and real people in it," he says. The hearty character soup mixes a dash of movie stars, including Carole Lombard, Clark Gable and Ronald Reagan (who never gets elected in this alternate reality), a pinch of sports stars, including Joe DiMaggio and Joe Louis, and a big serving of politicians, including Grand Rapids' own Sen. Arthur Vandenberg.

Steele says he chose Vandenberg as a character because his real-life political journey was a perfect fit for the story -- from his stance as an isolationist before Pearl Harbor to backing the war and eventually becoming an internationalist. An editor and publisher of The Grand Rapids Herald, Vandenberg served in Washington from 1928 to 1951.

"I didn't put him in the book just because he's from Grand Rapids," Steele says. "He could have been from Cleveland and he would be in the book."

A Detroit native, Steele gilds "The Affairs of State" with a few references to his hometown: a vice presidential speech, a Motown mafioso and Father Charles Coughlin, Royal Oak's controversial radio host heard by millions in the 1930s. In the book, the Coughlin character leads the pundits' charge against the liberal, philandering FDR.

Steele's favorite character is private eye Earl Mercia. "I never knew what he was going to do," he muses. The name is a play on the Earl of Mercia, the husband of legendary Lady Godiva and the inspiration for her famously nude 1057 horseback ride, which was, of course, all about politics. Back in 2005, Steele is researching a new historical novel, this one set in mid-20th century New York.

"I really love history, and I like to do the research on it," Steele says. "There are people who know more about history and are better writers than I am. So, why not take it and have fun with it?"

Oh, and those two Ford terms in the White House?

"I had to give some props to my homey," Democrat Steele says.