The Secrets We Kept: A Novel by Lara Prescott

The Secrets We Kept: A Novel. Lara Prescott. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.  September 2019. pb, 368 pp.; ISBN: 9780525656159.

Secrets are held to protect individuals, groups, and nations.  Our story begins with a group of typists working for the CIA who are told to type but not think about what they are typing and to forget what they are typing.  Slowly but surely, however, they realize that certain typists are being pulled from their work to do more for the CIA, then known as the OSS.  They are actually spies trained to deliver messages, packages and sensitive material.  Irina Drozdova is the daughter of a Russian seamstress and a man who died under interrogation as they were leaving Russia.  She is now a typist and she now has a reason to serve America in order to punish Russia for the loss of her father.

The novel alternates between these ladies and spies and the world of the famous Boris Pasternak, his wife and his mistress Olga Ivinskiya.  Olga supports her lover while he is inspired by the Muse to create Dr. Zhivago for which he will one day be awarded the Novel Prize in Literature.  Olga serves three years in a Russian Gulag and knows she has sacrificed her children and life for Boris; she has lived as the Lara in her lover’s novel.

The spies become messengers to deliver the Pasternak novel which is banned in Russia. They evolve into women and men with alternative lives.  Sally Forrester and Irina become lovers in a very intense but brief affair, given that homosexuality is illegal in these times.  Their separation becomes like a crushing loss like that of death.  Because of their work they will never know love or solid relationships as all who marry are dismissed by the CIA.

Espionage and literature are forces that change the world, often with a very heavy cost to those carrying out the spying or writing.  They are ready to kill or be killed to see it accomplished.  This story is also about repression and exposure, a celebration of true liberty achieved through agony and ecstasy.  Divided into alternate sections of “East” and “West,” the publication of the famous novel is charted from its original publication to its gradual spread throughout Europe and Russia itself.  Olga suffers the result after the death of her love.

The Secrets We Kept… is an exciting, reflective, poetic and adventuresome read – marvelous, memorable historical fiction – highly recommended reading! Finely crafted, Lara Prescott!!!

The Chelsea Girls: A Novel by Fiona Davis

The Chelsea Girls: A Novel.  Fiona Davis. Penguin Publishing Group.  July, 2019; pb, 368 pp.; ISBN #: 9781524744588.

The Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan has a long history of being home for numerous famous writers, playwrights, authors, and artists of varying kinds.  After serving in the USO in Europe during WWII, Hazel Riley and Maxine Mead are staying there while preparations are ongoing for the opening of Hazel’s play Wartime Sonata.  It’s a play about the fierce loyalty and dedication of American soldiers during WWII.  Hazel has discovered she may not be a talented actress Like Maxine but Hazel definitely has a gift for writing and producing plays.  Maxine has become famous as a gorgeous and talented actress but her life is beleaguered by her boyfriend Arthur, someone who floats between being a great lover and abusive destroyer.  It’s Hazel who protects Maxine in her darkest moments and mistakes. 

However, all of this is about to be drastically changed with Senator Joe McCarthy’s program to out all Communist card-holders or supporters.  The FBI are suddenly following Hazel and many of the actors in her world.  Eventually Maxine mistakenly gives Hazel’s name to an FBI agent as just an associate of the Communist party years ago, but it’s enough to do irreparable damage!  Their friendship is tarnished forever.  Will it be possible to save Hazel’s brilliant play and career?

Fiona Davis depicts this time with details that elicit the same fear in the reader that these artists endured as investigations, interviews, and black lists moved forward relentlessly condemning those associated with a Communist association.  The resulting taint left a residual negativity that ruined careers, lives and relationships with no possibility of escape.  This is not one of America’s finest hours and Fiona Davis depicts the atmosphere and facts with stunning accuracy, right up to the tragically stunning end.  Hazel will endure but will never be the same again!

Well-told historical fiction by a highly skilled author that is a must read! 

The Palest Ink by Kat Bratt

The Palest Ink.  Kay Bratt. Lake Union Publishing. October 2015. 416 pp.  ISBN#: 9781503946169.

Mao Tse-Tung is at a crossroads in China in the year 1966.  His original plan to increase agricultural output has been a disaster and stories about brutality, starvation and disease travel like lightning despite efforts to curtail dissension and negativity.  Three young Chinese students, Benfu, Pony Boy and Wen, are divided in their loyalty to Mao.  However, little by little, a transformation occurs in their devotion, an evolution in which they believe they must publish the abuses and brutalities being committed by Mao’s notorious Red Guard, a group of supporters who become Mao’s arm of accusation and compliance.  The latter discover they have power and they carry out that formidable opportunity with terror and death.  Benfu, Pony Bok and Wen carry out a plan to reveal this travesty of progress but the consequences will be phenomenal and costly.

Benfu is a talented violin player who comes from a distinguished family.  His mother is constantly monitoring his every move and her demands are almost paranoid in her efforts to preserve and guard the “family honor” and social status they have worked so hard to possess.  Benfu is becoming a man and so finds his mother’s efforts to control him unbearable.  His only consolation is the time he spends with his best friend, Pony Boy.

Tragedy worsens Pony Boy’s status as a poor young man.  When his father becomes ill, Pony Boy must work long, long hours just to allow his family to retain their home and have meager meals to survive.  Pony Boy after turning from an ardent Communist realizes Mao is repressing and brutalizing his people during the period when all high status Chinese people are being purged and reeducated.  Pony Boy and Benfu plan a publication that will expose all that is wrong with Mao’s plans and actual realities. 

Benfu and Pony Boy will fall in love with women they respect, independent, strong-minded women who are willing to testify to the travesties of justice now rampant throughout China.  Benfu is sent to escape to the country to escape the Red Guard’s investigations into wealthy families but that country journey is one of working on a collective farm in which self-criticism and judgment by others is a constant threat to life and limb.  Pony Boy continues their efforts while Benfu works and suffers.  Eventually their reunion will spark a final challenge that is breathtaking in its fierce challenge and involve some other very special characters.

The Palest Ink is a potent, beautiful story about resistance and loyalty to friend, family and foe the reader will find hard to forget.  Its insistence that the written word surpasses all memories proves significantly true about this particular, significant historical period.  The mission of serving as a witness to history is valuable beyond words and so succeeds beyond expectations.  Very nicely crafted, Kay Bratt!