She will not risk having a child that could possibly reveal her identity.

And, though she has many relationships with men, including renown art historian Bernard Berenson, she will not marry. She alienates herself from her beloved extended family in Washington DC and her activist father. There is also a terrible cost to maintaining her facade. Her mother and siblings entire lives-where they live, their occupations, everything-are completely dependent on Belle’s white identity, as her mother often reminds her. And, her skin is light enough that she can “pass” as white, which is exactly what she does. Belle doesn’t have “olive” skin because of her Portuguese heritage-the story she tells everyone who asks-her complexion is dark because she is African American. Her father, Richard Greener, was the first black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for racial equality. She was not born Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener to a family of Black Washingtonians in 1883.

However, Belle has a secret that no one can ever know.

She is courted by art dealers, embraced by the socially powerful, and profiled as an elegant, sophisticated career woman in the early 1900s, when working women were a rarity. Working alongside JP Morgan, himself, Belle becomes a power in her own right. She is hired by financier JP Morgan to curate his burgeoning collection of rare manuscripts, books and artwork for the newly constructed Pierpont Morgan Library, in New York City. In her early twenties, Belle da Costa Greene lands the job of a lifetime.

The personal librarian paperback