This collaboration between two best selling fiction writers had been recommended to me by a number of friends, and most importantly by my wife, but when I began to read it, I was not impressed. The language seemed to see-saw from a bit flat to a bit overblown  (in my opinion, a frequent result of a collaborative writing project), and the story appeared a bit contrived.  But after dropping it the first time after 20 pages, I returned to it and am grateful that I did.

The authors have taken historical facts and woven them into a compelling and fascinating story.  Belle de Costa Greene was one of five chidren born to a Black couple in the days after the Civil War when freedom and equality appeared to be possible.  Her father was a Harvard educated professor when Reconstruction failed and Jim Crow became the dominant model in the South while de facto segregation and discrimination prevailed in the north.  Belle’s mother, seeing the reality and faced with light-skinned children, decided to move to NYC and pass as whites.

Belle was working at the Princeton University library when she developed a working relationship with the nephew of J.P. Morgan, one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the country.  When Morgan sought a librarian to organize and develop his private library of incanubula and rare manuscripts, his nephew recommended Belle who Morgan hired.

The book chronicles Belle’s incredibly successful work in building this collection as well as the challenges she faced in ‘passing’ in the early years of the 20th C.  Her relationship with Morgan and with the art critic Bernard Berenson are wonderfully drawn, and the book is both informative and gripping. What I had initially dismissed as ‘chick lit’ (me bad) turned out to be a fine piece of fiction.  The writing is good enough and the story, plot, and characters are terrific.

This is a good selection for next summer’s beach reading or listening.  A friend who listened to the book on Audio thought it better to listen than to read.