The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray The Instant New York Times Bestseller! A Good Morning America* Book Club Pick! “Historical fiction at its best!”* A remarkable novel about J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict, and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray. In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps create a world-class collection. But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle’s complexion isn’t dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white—her complexion is dark because she is African American. The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths she must go to—for the protection of her family and her legacy—to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for being here. Be sure to follow us at youtube.com forward chest chris voss hit the bell notification button go to goodreads.com for chest chris voss see all the books we're reading or reviewing over there in my book you can also go to facebook linkedin twitter instagram all these different places the kids are all at these days on the interwebs uh so you can see all the wonderful things and groups that we're doing over there's five or six groups on Facebook alone. Just go over there.

So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now.

We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can pre-order the book right now wherever fine books are sold, but the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com.

On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom-made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book

from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold. Anyway, guys, we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. We have two amazing authors on the show today. They are the authors of the new book, The Personal Librarian, a novel that just came out June 29th, 2021. It's been done by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. And so we're excited to have them on the show today. Marie is a lawyer with more than 10 years experience as a litigator at two of the country's premier law firms.

She found her calling unearthing the hidden historical stories of women. Her mission is to excavate from the past the most important and complex and fascinating women of history and bring them into the light of present day where we can take can finally perceive the breadth of their contributions as well as the insights they bring to modern day issues as well we have victoria on the show a native of queens victoria earned a ba in communication disorders from hampton university and an mba from nyu victoria spent 10 years in corporate america before launching her entrepreneurial venture, a financial services agency for Agon USA, where she managed the number one division

for nine consecutive years. Welcome to the show, both you ladies. We certainly appreciate having you on. It's an honor. Thank you. We're glad to be here. Thank you for having us. And we're glad to have you. Congratulations on the new book. Give us your plugs on where people can find you on the interwebs. Sure. You can find me on Instagram, authormariebenedict.com, Facebook as well. And you can buy our books wherever books are sold. Yep, wherever books are sold. So I'll start with that one. You can go wherever books are sold. And I'm on every social media platform under

Victoria Christopher Murray. So if you put in Victoria Christopher Murray, you're going to get Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, you'll get everything. That's awesome. That's awesome. What motivated the two of you to want to write this book? Should I leap into it, Victoria? Yes, that's definitely a Marie question. So as you mentioned earlier, Chris, I was a lawyer in New York City, commercial litigator for well over a decade before I started writing full time. And when I was there, I knew right from the start that it wasn't really what I was called to do in terms of work, in terms of my career. So I would sneak out to all the cultural institutions in New York City to try and, I don't know, imagine a different life for myself during my workday. And when I say sneak out, that's because I would literally work like 10 o'clock at night would be a good night,

a good time to get out. I worked super long hours. And I used to love to go to the Morgan Library in New York City. That was one of my little refuges. And for people who aren't familiar with it, it is this jewel box of a library. The original library was four enormous multi-story rooms that housed J.P. Morgan's collection of rare and priceless manuscripts. And I happened to be there one day and I met a docent who had just finished up a tour. And she happened to mention that J.P. Morgan hadn't built this collection by himself, that he had hired a woman when he first built the library to help run it along with him and to help build up the collection, and that her name was Belta Costa Green. And I thought, in and of itself, that was remarkable. A woman running, really being JP Morgan's right-hand person and running this amazing institution at a time when women didn't even have the right to vote. We're talking 19.

And so I added her to my list of women that I thought about writing, writing books about. And over the years, I collected little bits of more information about her, including learning really about who she really was. And that is that she was a remarkable librarian, to be sure, but she was also a Black woman passing as white. She came from this incredible background. Her mother was part of this wonderful community, free community of color in Washington, D.C. that had been free for generations and that her father was actually during his lifetime a well-known advocate for equality. He was the first Black graduate of Harvard. He was the first Black professor at University of

South Carolina. He was the dean of Howard Law School. He was so many things. And this is this rich, erudite background that Valdecoste Green had come from, but she had to hide all that to pass as white because the world that she was living in was becoming increasingly segregated. And when I learned all that, the story that I thought was remarkable became unbelievable, just incredible. And I realized that I not only wanted but needed to have a partner in telling about story and I really wanted to have a black woman tell the story along with me as a writer of fiction I can imagine a lot of things but I absolutely cannot fathom what it would be like to be a black woman work in our world today or certainly not in our world in the early 1900s. And it was around that time that I read Victoria's incredible book, Stand Your Ground, which people should read if they haven't

yet. But it is this, oh, it's such a deep, important look at a huge crisis in our country, the shooting of young Black men. And it looks at this issue from really unique perspectives. It looked at it from the perspective of the mother of the young black boy and the wife of the police officer. And when I read this book, I just thought, wow, in some ways she's really trying to do what I'm trying to do, which is find the women in these stories. And so through our agents, I reached out to Victoria, sent her a treatment, what I was thinking about for the book, and very audaciously asked, even though we never met, we didn't know each other, if she would be interested in writing

a book with me. And I'll let Victoria take it. Yes, I'll take it over from here because it was really interesting. I got this wonderful treatment, but I didn't read it. I didn't know it was wonderful in the beginning because when my agent reached out to me and said that she wanted me to consider doing a collaboration, I was open to it. I had done six other collaborations with another author. So I love writing with somebody else better than I like writing with myself, about myself. But the first thing I did was Google Marie Benedict. And I saw that she wrote about women and history who have been lost in the folds of history. And I was like, OK, what does she want with me?

And I called my agent back and I said, has Marie seen me? Has she seen a picture of me? I'm a little bit different than she is. And my agent said, she knows you're Black. Can you just read the treatment? And it took me still about two months to read the treatment because when I read the first page, it was all about J.P. Morgan. And I had no interest in that man. I just couldn't even conjure up a little bit. And my agent kept calling me and saying, have you read it? And I'm like, oh, I'm really busy. And finally she said, after two months, you can't be too busy to read two pages. And so I read the second page and that's where it

got interesting because that's where Marie introduced Belle da Costa Green, and it was at least more interesting than J.P. Morgan. But Marie hid the lead because the last paragraph was that no one knew that Belle da Costa Green was Black. Wow. And I couldn't get to the telephone fast enough. I thought I had blown it because I'd been all that time. I had blown it by burying the really interesting parts. Marie was building up and I guess I wasn't reading it like a novel where you just let it

build up. And I just thought I had blown it. And I was so glad when we were connected by phone and immediately I knew we could do it because I'd done collaborations. So I know you have to have a connection. And Marie and I had that right away. I wasn't sure if she knew, but I knew we'd be able to write together. So this is classified as a historical fiction. I know we got a little bit of a touch on what the overview is of the book. Do you want to give us maybe a broader overview or do we get it covered of what the book's about? I think we got a little bit of it from Marie.

A little bit of it. Do you want to go into a little bit more of it sure let's do i think the only thing that i would add because she was this woman who helped jp morgan amass this great collection of his art and rare manuscripts he had an interest in that and the love of that and she did as well she wouldn't have been able to do it if he knew she was Black. And what was so interesting is that she is the product, Belle is the product of Richard T. Greener, as Marie already said, an activist, the first Black graduate from Harvard. And her mother was part of the Bleed family in Washington, D.C., which they had a history of being free Blacks, well-educated. All the women were teachers. The men were engineers. And so that's where she came from. But her mother and father separated sometime when Belle was in her teens because even though her mother had been in the fight for civil rights and

equality, when the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was overturned and it was the beginning of segregation in Jim Crow, her mother saw what was coming. Her mother saw what was coming and she said to her husband, we've been doing this. We've been trying to do this. It's time for us to get out. And he said, no, he was never going to give up the fight. So that's when they separated and her mother decided that they would, the children would all live as white. And it was, it had to be very difficult for Belle because at that point she was a teenager.

So she had lived a good part of her life as a little black girl coming from a very rich family. And now she had to switch. And so the story is really about the struggle and the sacrifices, her life, and always trying to hide. Because at any point, if her secret had been revealed it would have been a disaster yeah so being society and your reputation as society was a real big deal back then right oh absolutely yeah and for someone like bell it was more than just a big deal it was it could literally be the difference between life and death. It could be the difference between being classified as white or black. And in the world of Jim Crow, there was nothing in between.

You were either one or the other. And the path your life could take varied drastically. Where you live, the kind of jobs you had, who you could marry, whether you could or couldn't really have children. All of these things were dictated by how society and the government defined you. And the one drop rule was starting at that time, which meant that if you had one drop of black blood, that meant that you were considered to be black. So for Bella and her family, how she was defined, how she was by the law and by society, absolutely was going to be the transformative factor in who they became. And they started the path of passing kind of slowly over

time. But once they made that decision, everything that followed really depended on them. It was like a house of cards that was really stacked on this very precarious foundation. And Belle had to live with that tightrope every single day because not only was her position with J.P. Morgan dependent on that, but her whole family's identity as white people was dependent on Belle's identity as a white person. Wow. It's unfortunate that we had that. Who would make a law called wonder? Jesus. That's the first time I've heard of that. I read casts and a number of books, especially this last year and the horrors of what we did. And I don't know, it's, we need to watch out. We don't go back to this with some of the stuff that's gone on in our country right now. We seem to be just going back in time and I'm just like, so I'm looking at some pictures of this, uh, the Piermont or Pier Pierpont,

uh, Morgan library. I've never seen this. I don't know why it's somehow gone by me in my whole life. This thing is extraordinarily, I don't know. It is so beautiful. We calls it,

but we calls it a jewel box. Wow. Those of you in the audience, if you've never Googled this, Google Pierpont Morgan Library, my God, it is something else. And it's so interesting because people hear the word library. So they're thinking about this massive seven stories, the New York Public Library or something like that. But I have to remind people that this was just for his private collection when he put this together. And so I think Marie already said it, but it was just four rooms. It was his office. It was Bell's

office. It was the library part where a lot of the collection was kept. And it was this magnificent rotunda. And so Marie and I had, Marie had been there many times and she took me there before we started writing the book or as we were just beginning. And I am so glad because being in that library, when we were writing, we were able to put the readers right in there. And so people felt like they were part of that library because we had been there and we were able to bring it to the pages. And I think the romanticism of this time that people don't realize is back then they didn't, I would guess at this time, they hadn't had libraries spread across America. And I forget the Robert Barron who created that. Yes. And so at that time, knowledge and books were just for the wealthy and powerful that could get access to them.

And everyone didn't have access to information. So the manuscripts, like you say, and stuff that he valued were, this was like almost like a vault or a temple to that stuff. Yeah, that's a great way to put it, a temple. In many ways, the way he saw his collection, J.P. Morgan, and then the way that Bell saw his collection was it was like a temple to the power of the written word, the power of the printed word in particular. They had in their collection some of these early handwritten gilded manuscripts, but they also really focused on the early printed books and the dissemination of the English language. And both J.P. Morgan and Bell felt so strongly about the power of the written word, the power of the written word to transform not just the people of the higher, richer classes,

but to transform everyone. And that's something that Bell really had instilled in her from her father. He was a librarian, obviously very well educated, but he also had a love of rare and priceless books. And so when Belle came in, she took what was then a hodgepodge collection, which honored the print, the early printed word, but had a couple treasures and then had Napoleon snuff boxes was really a mess. She came in and rounded out that collection to make it really unparalleled in terms of what was out there in Europe. But then to her, what was important is to take it even further.

As you mentioned, libraries, free libraries in particular, were really just starting in the late 1800s, early 1900s with Andrew Carnegie. There were libraries, but many of them were subscription libraries. So only the wealthy people had access to a wide range of volumes. For Bell, it was really important to her, at least the way Victoria and I see it, was that her sacrifice of passing, what she gave up, the sacrifices she made in suppressing really her true identity, had to be worth what she was going to leave behind. And legacy wasn't just building up this

library. It was turning it from a private collection, really available only to J.P. Morgan and the people he let in, to turning it into a public institution. She really initiated the drive to have her, his son, Jack Morgan, who took over after he died to, to give all this vast priceless collection over to the public and to give the public access. This place is extraordinary. I've just been passing through the pictures. How instrumental was she was in the design of this? And then of course the roof has all of, I don't know, I'm sure what to call the paintings on the roof, almost like 16 chapel sort of stuff on the roof. How much was she instrumental in the design of this and the artwork and all that? The building was already complete, right Marie?

Yeah, it was nearing completion when he hired Belle, but she was, so she wasn't instrumental in the design of the building itself. She definitely weighed in on parts of the decor and the furniture was all handmade for their design and in what was hanging on the walls, the interior structure to some extent, where she really had a mark both then and now is in what was in the collection itself. Wow. Wow. This is extraordinarily beautiful.

Just amazing on the interior of the work. You could spend hours just sitting in here looking at the room. I don't know why Marie used to do that. In terms of square footage, it's not that large, but you could spend hours in there just marveling at the three stories, just how high. it's just beautiful. They have a rotating collection and they did at that time as well. They had so many volumes, they couldn't keep everything on the shelves or have it all on display at once. So at any given time, there would be different things for people to look at. And they've maintained that practice today. But the footprint of the building now today is multiple times bigger than it was originally. Initially, the building was those original four rooms. It was right next door to J.P. Morgan's Brownstone, where he lived. So it was really like his home office, for lack of a better term, a really fancy, fabulous home

office. And as the years went on and it became a public institution, they started to purchase more land. And now there's an enormous cafe, a store, they have galleries, they have a vast other sort of collection now, in addition to what they originally had. I was looking at their website and I got shoved into the menu. Now I'm hungry. I caught the cafe part. Yeah, it's really interesting. You look at the building, at least the old pictures that I have in black and white, and it's really nondescript from the outside. It looks cool. There's a little bit of pillars in the center, but the inside is, yeah, this makes the 16th Chapel look like boring or something. I don't know.

It is really breathtaking inside. If you like exquisite libraries, I really do think it's one of the most beautiful libraries in the world. So what are some of the other things we can tease about in the book? You had to mix fiction with real life. How did you guys go about that? Let's get into some of the deets and maybe tease out some things that people can want to pick up the book. One thing I think that people will be interested in is the relationship between bell and jp morgan and what were they to each other right uh were they were clearly employee and employer

a man and a woman but it went so much further than that and we really explore that in the book how she became his confidant really by, by the time he passed away, she was probably the closest person in his life. And just somebody he could talk to, she would read to him, they would play cards together. But the big thing is whether or not they ever were involved in a relationship. And this is where fact and fiction come together. We do know a fact where she was asked about this once after he passed away. And when she was asked whether they were involved, and her response was, we tried. So then that sent Marie

and I down a rabbit hole. What does that mean? What does that mean? And so that's a fact. And so we built upon that fact with fiction. Do you have any other examples of that, Marie? I definitely think the nature of their relationship is it's central to the book because Bells, before she was hired by J.P. Morgan, she had had some success in her life. She had, we think, a college education. It's not entirely clear. She was a well-respected librarian at Princeton University. But the sort of movement from that job to becoming J.P. Morgan's personal librarian was like a rocket ship to a different world. Suddenly she went from well-educated,

somewhat well-to-do person to becoming tremendously more affluent personally, to becoming ultimately a regular fixture in New York City society. She became like a mini celebrity in her own right in the Gilded Age. She decided, we think, this is our Velde Costa Green, of course, but she decided, and it's certainly widely reported in newspapers and magazines at the time, that she was very well known for her flamboyant dress, for her witty, sometimes, pardon the pun, off-color quips. She was flirtatious and flamboyant, hiding her secret in plain sight, daring people to look over here at my red scarf and don't question the color of my skin. So, you know, this job put her in close personal contact with J.P.

Morgan, where they became, like Victoria said, employees, employee-employees, confidant, social partners. They had this flirtatious relationship. J.P. Morgan was well known for his philandering at this time, had multiple mistresses going on at once. So that was something that Belle often had to feel. She might have one mistress in the library and another in his office and a third coming in in the rotunda, you know, so she was managing all this. It was crazy. So this job and her relationship with J.P. Morgan was completely transformative for her in terms of her standing in society. Yet at the same time, they had this unique, honest, frank, kind of bold relationship that was probably unlike any other that he had um that very many people this time had and that constantly changing nature of their relationship that sexual tension that was always we think in the air between them it makes for a very page-turning we hope anyway reading

and the fact that she's on this tightrope, right? I mean, she's pretending to be someone she's not. And if JP Morgan found out who she really was, we don't know. She wouldn't have known what he might have done to her. He certainly has a mercurial personality, but he was not above retribution for people that he felt had wronged him or his family. So that had to be something that went through Belle's mind as well. So it's very suspenseful, just her day-to-day life with J.P. Morgan. It really is. And then we included her family. So you see her black life pretending to be white so you see her black life that when she's home whether or not they admitted it they were black and then every day when she stepped outside she was wearing a mask she was putting on an act and that's what the book is about wow that's extraordinary i'm looking over some of the pictures over that you can find online as well what are some other aspects of the book that we can tease out? Sadly, with novels,

we can't give away too much in the middle on how it ends. A little bit of an arc, I think. This evolution of Belle da Costa Green from Princeton librarian to becoming not just one of the most powerful people in the art world, but really one of the most successful career women of her day. The power that she had, the money she had access to, and the very bold way she presented herself, not just socially in society, but also from a business perspective. As she goes about building this world-class collection, she has to secure the necessary pieces of the collection from dealers, owners all over the world. So as she's traveling to different societies, some of which have never had slavery or have not had slavery for quite some time, she's experiencing a very different life and very

different people. And it really throws into bold relief the Gilded Age in which she lives. And we often think of the Gilded Age, which is the time period of the book, as this time of great industrialists and vast wealth. We think of Newport mansions and the Vanderbilts. And absolutely, that's the world that Belle lived in as the personal librarian to J.P. Morgan. And in the pages of the book, you're going to see her circulate at those parties. But one of the things that we don't think about when you think about the Gilded Age is the racism and the segregation that was underlying it all. And as Victoria said, to see that other side of her life, not just the sort of celebrity social success that she has, the Gilded Age part of it, but you also see the other part of it. You see the sacrifices, you see the fear, you see the hiding, you see the fighting

for equality that's going on behind the scenes. And so you see the two sides of Belle, but you also see the two sides of the Gilded Age as well. And that's something that I think when we think about this time period, we don't think about a lot and people don't talk about the way in which this time period of the sort of post-Reconstruction era, when there was this time period of great hope and equality. As Victoria mentioned, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, we have this moment in time in which our country is coming together to really embrace full equality. That's the time period when her parents married, when they went to the University of South Carolina, when Belle was born. And then as those years go by, that promise of equality starts to erode. And in its place are the Jim Crow laws and segregation and over institutionalized racism. And that's a time period that we don't often study in school. And to watch the way in which that happens and watch the parallels that happen in our own society, because that equality was not addressed and set up at that

time when it should have been, and how that's playing out in our society too, the story really becomes historic and modern as well. Yeah. You always say, Marie always says, it's timeless and timely because things that were happening a hundred years ago and that we were able to cover in the book are happening today. But another thing to tease out is because there are really heavy parts in this book because we have to deal with racism and all that came with it during that time,

including lynchings and the race riots. But she met the love of her life. And we explore that in this book, because it was an interesting love of her life, where I almost sometimes feel like he was picked out for her by his wife. And I'll just leave it like that. Because I'm watching you, Chris, and you're like, okay, what's this? You should watch it. Something else you don't think about with the Gilded Age. There was a lot of that interesting stuff going on. And it kind of raised our eyebrows, especially that relationship that became such an important part of her life.

And with Bernard Berenson, who she was first introduced to when she was 10 years old, or about 10 years old, as a little girl by her dad with one of his books. And so to meet him when she was an adult swept her off her feet. Oh, wow. Wow. With his wife's help. Yes. With his wife. I'm going to read the book just for this story

alone. This is trying to figure out what that means. And there were some shocking parts that as we were writing it, we were shocked. Yeah. Wow. You don't think, again, you think of the past as being so much more. So conservative. Conservative. And it's quite true. Nope. There was also, we learned about Boston marriages, which were a relationship, a same-sex relationship between two women, which were considered long-term. Yeah, Boston marriages. Yeah.

And again, were relatively known and common in society. And I don't want to use the word accepted. That might be too strong, but certainly recognized. And there wasn't the enormous stigma that you might have assumed there would be during that time period. And that notion that people are living very different lives and sometimes having to wear, as Victoria used it earlier, masks to fit into society is an important theme in the book. The fact that being your authentic self, whether it's being a woman of color or a man from a Jewish background or being in a same-sex relationship, all of those things were happening very much during that time period. But because there was, in many ways, a mask,

this look that you were supposed to fit into in society, a lot of those things were happening beneath the surface. And a lot of the characters in our story, which are all based on real people, they're all carrying secrets, hiding secrets. Sounds like a lot of secrets. People love that in novels. Yeah.

Everybody had a secret. Everybody. In this book, everybody had a secret, and the secrets were facts. Those were the fiction things that we put in. The fiction part came with what were we going to do with those secrets. No, you go ahead. I'm sorry. This is really interesting because she is on a high wire. She gets vaulted to the highest levels

of New York high society working with J.P. Morgan. So there's a lot to risk there. There's a lot to lose. It was a high reward, but high risk. And walking into it, she and her mother knew the risk. That's why she was born Belle Marion Greener. And when the family split from the father and began passing as white, her mother suggested strongly or put in her name became Belle DaCosta Green. They had all changed their name from Greener to Green, but she and her brother had to use the name da Costa to explain their complexion. That was, they were going, they suddenly, when they split from the father, they had a Portuguese grandmother.

And so that's how she explained her dusky or other words they used to describe her complexion. There were always rumors, but she was ready for it with righteous indignation, and she was going to blame it on the Portuguese. Oh, wow. This sounds like quite the story and quite the detail. Anything more you want to tease out on the book before we go out? Hmm.

We've thrown a lot in. We've thrown a lot in. If they don't want to pick up the book at this point, something's wrong with them, really. Just that marriage, that wife part. I still want to figure out what that's about. His wife was a constant in that relationship.

That's all. I think with this story, as with all the women that I write about, because I write almost exclusively about historical women who've left us a legacy. We are beholden to these women in so many different ways for their contributions, usually tangible, like in this case, a library. And more than that, sort of Belle in many, was the first modern librarian. She created all these practices that are still used in libraries today. But they can also teach us so much about what we're dealing with in our own time period.

We think about historical women as being so different from ourselves, but they're really not. They're dealing with many of the same issues. They're having the same struggles that we go through. If we can step back a little and look at their lives through that lens, there's so much we can extrapolate and take away from their experiences. And probably Belle da Costa Green more than anyone. I think what she went through in terms of her experiences are so timely. When Victorian, the story, certainly we had a first draft and finished it before the

pandemic started. And we got our big edits back right before the pandemic, which of course, very quickly led into the social unrest in our country. And every day, many times a day, Victoria and I are talking about our book, editing our book, which of course focuses in on issues of race. But then we're also have all the issues that are happening around us as well. And suddenly, the things that are happening on the pages of our book are happening in our real lives. And that not only brought us a lot closer in terms of our friendship and as people, but it also layered and really made Belle's story that much more alive and that much more timely in many ways. I think it's an opportunity for people when you read the book,

definitely there's suspense, definitely there's Boston marriages and open marriages, and there's the Gilded Age glamour. But there's also a really timely, important perspective to be drawn from it. And one that maybe hopefully sheds some light on our own era and our own time. And I love that, Marie, because it's so true that once the civil unrest started happening, we thought we knew Belle's story and her family story, and we did. But when we saw what happened last summer, we began to really understand Belle's mother. Belle's mother made that decision. She had been in the civil rights fight. She made the decision to back away and live differently because she didn't want to find her children on the ground with their necks underneath someone's knee. That's what she was doing. And so we were able to see that and then write it that

way. She wasn't passing because she wanted to be white. She came from a proud Black heritage. She was passing because she wanted to be equal and she felt that was the safest way to protect her children wow wow powerful stories and lessons for our time what's the old uh saying i like to say if the one thing man can learn from his past is that man never learns from his past and i use man in the example of the thing and it's interesting how these stories that you guys are telling they're coming back with the same lesson. Like maybe we should stop some of this event. We had that one little period of time with the Civil Rights Act of 1875. And if it had not been overturned, if reconstruction had continued, where would we be today?

Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting, I think, look into our times. Ladies, it's been wonderful to have you both on the show and sharing this wonderful book with us. Give us your plugs as we go out so people can find you on the interwebs, please. Okay. For me, again, it's Victoria Christopher Murray. You Google that and you'll get all my social media. Lots of things on my website. And then our book is wherever books are sold.

The Personal Librarian is everywhere. And we've been so fortunate with the reception that we've received from this book from readers. And you can find me anywhere under Author Marie Benedict. I'm not as socially media active as Victoria, maybe, but certainly on Facebook and Instagram and on my website. There you go. There you go. So thank you very much, both of you, for coming on the show. We certainly appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you. It's been an honor. Guys, check out the book wherever fine books are sold, but just go to the places where the fine books are sold, not those alleyways. The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. Check that book out.

Of course, you can get it in all the different formats and everything else. Sounds really exciting to read, so you definitely want to pick it up. Go to goodreads.com for just Chris Voss and follow everything we're doing over there. Go to youtube.com for just Chris Voss to watch the video version of this. Go on to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, wherever those cool kids are hanging out these days. We certainly appreciate you tuning in. Stay safe safe and we'll see you guys next time. Thank you.