A review of “The Personal Librarian” in 100 words by Catherine Stover
As luck would have it, I saw the haunting painting “The Drop Sinister – What Shall We Do with It?” by Harry Wilson Watrous during the same week that I read the historical novel The Personal Librarian. Both works are set in the early 1900s, when the “one drop rule” said that if a person had a Black ancestor, they could not claim to be White, even if their skin was white. As you can imagine, this created a no-win situation: you could be black or white, but not both. This novel explores the consequences of having to make this choice.
Work cited:
Benedict, Marie and Victoria Christopher Murray. The Personal Librarian. Berkley, 2022, p. 274.