Book Review: The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott takes place during the Cold War in the 1950’s. It starts in Washington, DC, where readers are introduced to several women working at the State Department as typists. Many of these women are chaffing at their current situations-having been integral parts of the war as spies, they’re now typists and secretaries in the Mad Men-esque world of the intelligence of that time, often for the very men they were working alongside during World War II. Some of the women have their own secrets, and we learn that many people are not what they seem to be.

Then we switch perspectives to see the world from the eyes of Olga, the mistress and confidant of Dostoyevsky, who is currently working on his politically controversial masterpiece, Doctor Zhivago, when she’s seized and questioned by the secret police. While Stalin has declared Dostoyevsky to be untouchable, the government harasses, interrogates and convicts his associates in an attempt to get at him. His long term muse and mistress is an integral part of his creative process and finds her strength tested again and again.

Readers are taken in and out of the stories of different women who are all struggling to find their own paths and identities, while navigating the incredible constrictive worlds of politics and gender roles that they’re stuck in. We see the glamour and intrigue of the world of spies and the origin story of Doctor Zhivago, one of the most famous Russian novels of all time.

Good For:

I read this book quickly, nervous to see how the women would negotiate the treacherous worlds they were in, and what they would choose when confronted with impossible situations that called their families, political allegiances and lives into question. The author does a wonderful job of making the different situations come alive, and establishing a common thread of the women’s fight for agency. Whether they were in prison or unhappy marriages, the women were all fighting to be the authors of their own lives, and I was right there with them.