The Personal Librarian

Belle da Costa Greene served as J.P. Morgan's personal librarian. She helped procure rare books and manuscripts for the collection. She had knowledge of ancient works and the skill and chutzpah to compete with others to procure the key items for his collection. She also had a hidden history. Though she was light-skinned, her father was the first black professor at a southern University (and aa Harvard graduate.) She had a family of free blacks in Washington D.C., though her mother had taken her and siblings to raise as white in New York City.

The book is a work of fiction, yet tries to be fairly faithful to her history. The language is fairly authentic to the time. The feelings and general sentiment are those of today. The characters struggle with the concerns of modern day race relations projected into the past. It feels more like the concerns of today than the concerns of a century ago. 

The story of a woman having a position of strength in the financial world of men is a powerful one on its own. She was the hidden source of the success of an important institution. 

The story of a woman switching from "black" to "white" is an interesting one that still seems to be a battle today. The race relationship is a big mess that is part genetics, part upbringing and part sociology. Two people may have identical genetic background, yet one came from a family that is considered "black", so they are black, while the other came from a "white" family, so they are white. Letting people choose how to represent themselves seems like the logical way to handle things. That is what the protagonist did in this book. Alas, that is not commonly supported today.