The Personal Librarian: A Novel

"This novel tells a fictionalized tale about a very real woman: Belle da Costa Greene, one of the “it” girls of the turn of the 20th century. As the personal librarian to J.P. Morgan, one of the richest and most powerful men in America at the time, Belle crisscrossed Europe acquiring rare art and manuscripts for Morgan’s personal library. She also led a glittering social life in the upper echelons of Gilded Age New York. But the whole time, Belle was keeping a huge secret: She was “colored,” in the parlance of that time, and passing for white. Authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray imagine how Belle navigated a world she wasn’t born into, why she chose to pass, and what the cost of keeping that lifelong secret might have been."