Two authors, one white and one black, have teamed up to write the story of Belle da Costa Greene, born Belle Marion Greener, daughter of Richard Greener, who was the first black man to graduate from Harvard University but fair-skinned enough to be assumed to be white.

Belle's mother, living in Washington DC, has determined to give her children every advantage in a world where she sees the civil rights of people of color being steadily eroded as the decades pass after the end of the Civil War.  She moves her family to New York City when Belle is eight years old, in 1887, to live the precarious life of "passing for white," to the profound dismay of her husband, an advocate for equality among people of all races.

Belle's name is changed to Belle da Costa Greene, evidencing a fictitious Portuguese grandmother to explain the Mediterranean tone of her skin, and she embarks on a career in the collection and curating of antique, art, books, and manuscripts, first as a librarian at Princeton University but soon, at the age of 26, as the personal librarian of J. P. Morgan in 1905 at the Pierpont Morgan Library.

My friend Patty G. describes the book thus:  "This is the remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, -- J. P. Morgan's personal librarian -- who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true."  What a glimpse it gives us into the subjects of race relations, women's role in society, and the world of acquiring, collecting, and displaying antique art and especially antique manuscripts and books, the cut-throat competition among dealers and connoisseurs to possess these cultural treasurers, and the heart-wrenching choices that Belle must make in order to live her life as she wants it, while supporting and protecting her family all the while.

Belle was a true person, and much is known of her life, but some of it she kept concealed, and literary sleuthing has been necessary to try to fill in the gaps, as she kept no journals, and personal letters are not extant.  So it is described as historical fiction because of the necessity to fill in the gaps with reasonable speculations and to recreate scenes and conversations.

She was a remarkable woman, one of a kind.  This is a story well worth reading.