Marie Benedict's Carnegie's Maid and Why the Philanthropist Started Paying for Libraries

Libraries are among my most favourite places, and I've long been curious about Andrew Carnegie who financed hundreds of them  in the US, Canada and abroad at the turn of the 20th century.  (The photo is of the original Carnegie Library in Walla Walla WA where I got my first library card, age 5 or 6.) When looking for a good biography of him, I came across another library treasure that isn't quite a "true" story, but an historical novel that givdes a possible explanation of why the industrialist gave away his fortune.  The book is Carnegie's Maid by Marie Benedict, a prolific novelist who specializes in writing historical novels about women on the edges of great things.

 

Her books include novels based on the lives of  Mileva Marić (The Other Einstein, 2016), Hedy Lamarr (The Only Woman in the Room, 2019), Clementine Churchill (Lady Clementine, 2020), Belle da Costa Greene (The Personal Librarian, with Victoria Christopher Murray 2021), and Rosalind Franklin (Her Hidden Genius, 2022).  

 

I have some experience in trying fill in the gaps in the lives of historical figures.  One of my first books was about Robert Nelson, a doctor and anglophone Patriot in the Canadian Rebellions of 1837-38. His francophone colleagues were the one who were remembered when I wrote The Words on the Wall: Robert Nelson and the Rebellion of 1837 in the 1990s, and I wanted to set the record straight.  I did a lot of research in archives and libraries, and the book has 198 footnotes. But to make his story readable and believable, I felt compelled to invent some events and characters that fill in Nelson's emotional life. Therefore, I'm  on Benedict's side when it comes to allowing a little real fiction into novels about the lives of "real" people.

 

So far I've read two other of her books, the ones about Hedy Lamarr and Belle da Costa Greene, and been swept away by all three.  Benedict begins with solid information about her heroines, and then does some imagining of things that might have happened to them.  In Carnegie's Maid she clearly indicates that the person is made up, but she also explains why she thinks that someone in Carnegie's life inspired him to make his generous gifts to so many towns although she's equally clear that no one knows for sure.  Whatever, the result is a very good read.