Nan Britton, a young single mother, smiled softly as she went to bed on the evening of August 2, 1923. Her married lover and the father of her child would soon be returning from a business trip. She'd see him soon. With his generous support, she was living comfortably in New York.
Her life, though, was about to change dramatically. Some 3,000 miles away, at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, her lover, the President of the United States (the first elected after women won the right to vote), had just died unexpectedly.
Beloved at the time of his death, President Harding's reputation would soon be in tatters as the public learned of his and his administration's many misdeeds. The scandals were massive, his economic policies a disaster, and his philandering rampant. Some who worked for him ended up in prison or dead (by suicide). Harding, in death, became a pariah. The country grew to hate the late President.
The only person they hated more was Nan Britton. Unable to secure support from either the Harding family or the Republican Party, she went public with her story about her affair with the late President and the child he fathered. Against all odds, she published America's first tell-all book, The President's Daughter. A book that shocked the world with its revelations and its explicit details of intimacies. Most, thinking the book a lie, labeled it a cheap knifing pornography authored by a whoring extortionist.
The Most Hated Woman in America is Nan Britton's story-the story of an engaging, fun, and determined woman trying to provide for her daughter. Through persistence and luck she overcomes the rich and powerful, raging sexism, misogyny and abuse. Ultimately, she achieved the financial success she wanted but in doing so paid a terrible and unanticipated personal price.