Bookn' with Friends: "The Secrets We Kept" by Lara Prescott

WPL's adult book club will meet at 6:30pm on Monday, September 29 for a discussion of The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott. Selected for the 2025 Reading Challenge topic "a book based on an historic event," The Secrets We Kept is based on the real-life story of a CIA plot to infiltrate the hearts and minds of Soviet Russia through Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago.  The 2019 novel is 368 pages and has a 3.65 rating on Goodreads. Copies are available to check out at the front desk beginning August 26.

From the publisher:

At the height of the Cold War, two secretaries are pulled out of the typing pool at the CIA and given the assignment of a lifetime. They are to smuggle Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR, where no one dares publish it, and help Pasternak's magnum opus make its way into print around the world. Glamorous and sophisticated Sally Forrester is a seasoned spy who has honed her gift for deceit all over the world - using her magnetism and charm to pry secrets out of powerful men. Irina is a complete novice, and under Sally's tutelage quickly learns how to blend in, make drops and invisibly ferry classified documents.

The Secrets We Kept combines a legendary literary love story - the decades-long affair between Pasternak and his mistress and muse, Olga Ivinskaya, who was sent to the Gulag and inspired Zhivago's heroine, Lara - with a narrative about two women empowered to lead lives of extraordinary intrigue and risk. From Pasternak's country estate outside Moscow to the brutalities of the Gulag, from Washington, DC, to Paris and Milan, The Secrets We Kept captures a watershed moment in the history of literature - told with soaring emotional intensity and captivating historical detail. And at the center of this unforgettable debut is the powerful belief that a piece of art can change the world.