Cokie: A Life Well Lived

Journalist Steven Roberts (My Father's House) writes lovingly and movingly of his 53-year marriage to Cokie Roberts, the journalist, author, and radio and TV personality, who succumbed to cancer in 2019. The daughter of politicians Hale and Lindy Boggs (U.S. Congressional representatives from New Orleans), Cokie was a writer of popular history who sought to insert the stories of women into the standard narrative, and she is also heralded as one of the "founding mothers" of National Public Radio. In this biography, her husband follows the same organizing principle she used in her 1998 best-seller We Are Our Mothers' Daughters; it's divided into chapters for each of the roles Cokie played in private and public life: wife, mother, friend, journalist, author, advocate. The book's theme is that Cokie's private life was as meaningful as her public life. Steven writes touching stories of Cokie's personal value system, her focus on motherhood, her Catholic faith, and her advocacy for women's rights; he also calls on personal reminiscences of Cokie from her family and friends.