Like Laura, Sadie was devoted to her work. And also like Laura, she’d met and fallen in love with someone who was as passionate about their career as she was. After all the uncertainty of the past several months, Sadie had finally set herself free. She was free to love the handsome, burly man who’d approached her in the Reading Room so many months ago, and free to continue as curator, protector, and champion of the Berg Collection. She checked her watch.
It was time to head uptown, back to the library, back home.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
While I enjoy researching the history of each building I write about, the stories and characters are fictional, and with this book, especially, I took great liberties with the security procedures and organizational policies of the New York Public Library. For over a hundred years, this beloved literary mecca has anchored my city and been a haven for its residents, and for that I’m truly grateful. The seven-room apartment inside the library, however, did exist, and for three decades was the home of the library’s superintendent, John H. Fedeler Sr., and his wife and three children. The family I write about in this book comes from my imagination, not from the historical record.
Several books helped me during my research, including The New York Public Library: The Architecture and Decoration of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, by Henry Hope Reed and Francis Morrone; Pulitzer’s Schooclass="underline" Columbia University’s School of Journalism, 1903–2003, by James Boylan; American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century, by Christine Stansell; The Book Thief and Thieves of Book Row, both by Travis McDade; Fighting for Life by S. Josephine Baker; Radical Feminists of Heterodoxy, by Judith Schwarz; Brothers: The Origins of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, by Lola L. Szladits; Top Cats: The Life and Times of the New York Public Library Lions, by Susan G. Larkin; The Story Collector, by Kristin O’Donnell Tubb; and The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. The Surviving Spinsterhood book was inspired by Marjorie Hillis’s Live Alone and Like It (I couldn’t resist including two of her utterly perfect chapter titles, “Solitary Refinement” and “Pleasures of a Single Bed”), and the article by Inez Haynes Gillmore mentioned in the novel was first published in the April 1912 issue of Harper’s Bazaar. For further reading on the Columbia University library heist that inspired my story, I recommend “Picking Up the Pieces,” by Jean W. Ashton, in The Strategic Stewardship of Cultural Resources: To Preserve and Protect, edited by Andrea T. Merrill.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Stefanie Lieberman for your keen insights and support, and to Stephanie Kelly for your ingenious editing skills—knowing you’re both by my side makes all the difference. Thanks to Kathleen Carter, John Parsley, Christine Ball, Amanda Walker, Alice Dalrymple, Becky Odell, Stephanie Cooper, Natalie Church, Christopher Lin, Lexy Cassola, Nikki Terry, Liz Van Hoose, Adam Hobbins, and Molly Steinblatt.
I’m grateful to everyone who shared their knowledge with me as I researched and wrote this book, including Jean Ashton, Andrew Alpern, Francis Morrone, Hope Tarr, Kristin O’Donnell Tubb, George Bixby, and Marion and Sue Panzer. At the New York Public Library, I’m indebted to Melanie Locay, Matthew Kirby, Carolyn Vega, and Keith Glutting. Greg Wands, I’m so grateful for your love, advice, and encouragement.
Finally, a huge shout-out to my family and friends, as well as my fellow writers and readers, for making this journey such joy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fiona Davis is the nationally bestselling author of The Dollhouse, The Address, The Masterpiece, and The Chelsea Girls. She lives in New York City and is a graduate of the College of William & Mary and the Columbia Journalism School.
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