From the NYT:

I tried to say something complicated and textured about a woman and a mother-son relationship that was both. When my parents divorced, I moved out of Mom’s house. But when my daughter was born, my wife and I named her Nancy in tribute and celebration. I may have failed in telling this story. But the review pretends I never tried. Worse, it suggests I set out to ruin my mother. Is this what happens when you try to honestly assess the life of a pioneering woman? To write anything other than hagiography exposes that sometimes people have to make hard choices and that life is messy. It was precisely the sort of rigidity McKelvey seems to demand that Mom fought her whole life.

John Dickerson

Washington