Belle had to guard every word, move and emotion to avoid betraying her true ethnicity and ending a life and financial prosperity few people - Black or white - had achieved in that time. Her father, a civil rights activist whom she dearly loved, abandoned Belle, her mother and siblings after they decided to live as a white family. While social issues are a thread of this book, the main thrust is the life Belle made for herself through her wit, intelligence, and single-minded determination to succeed at all costs. His was a world apart from Belle’s true heritage, though she hailed from an educated family (her father was the first Black American Harvard graduate) and she herself was college-educated. In Belle’s time gender bias and racism were especially rampant, certainly in the rarified circles in which Morgan moved. At her mother’s urging and to her father’s dismay, Belle elected to discard her real name, Belle Marion Greener, for the pseudonym she lived with for the rest of her life. How she accomplished this is told through a seamless blending of fact and fiction that kept me hooked throughout the reading.Īt the age of 20, Belle’s life began in earnest when she was introduced to the fierce and fabulously wealthy Morgan by his nephew. In her time - early to mid-20th century - she was famous and celebrated in the international world of fine art and rare books. With meticulous research, the authors have created a fictionalized, intimate portrait of the real-life Belle da Costa Greene, a person you’ve probably never heard of. This is the premise of the recently-published historical novel, “Personal Librarian,” by bestselling authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. Imagine this young woman is a light-skinned Black American passing herself off as white. Morgan, to hire you as his personal librarian over candidates with stronger credentials. Imagine being a young woman in the early 1900s with the moxie to convince the American titan of industry and finance, J.P. Authors: Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
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