Cold. Ostentatious. Hostile to socialist politics. Kate Debs, Eugene’s wife, has gotten a bad rap. With few exceptions, historians and biographers have depicted his lifelong partner in the harshest of terms. But as scholars dig deeper into the archives, we’re discovering a much different image of Katherine Metzel Debs. She wasn’t just the daughter of a prominent druggist; she was reared in a German émigré family well-versed in radical ideas. She wasn’t simply a private person who shrank from the limelight; she was a socialist herself who did what she could to support Gene’s unstinting work for the cause.