I'm so excited that the "book of my heart"
Secretary to the Socialite is finally out in the world!!! Here's a little peek behind the story...
I’ve had so many questions from early readers about “who is
real” in my story, so I thought I’d make a quick post (and use
some of my notebooks full of research!). This was such a fun story
for me to write, because Taos has been a special place in my own
life. When I was very young, about 4, my parents decided to spend
part of the summers in Taos, and so that was my vacation spot every
year. One year, we visited a beautiful museum in an old house just
outside of town, the Millicent Rogers Museum, and on the gift shop
wall was a Vogue photo of a
gorgeous blonde woman in a Charles James blouse and piles of
turquoise and silver bracelets. I had to know more about her!
The Museum was started by one of
Millicent’s three sons, Paul Peralta Ramos, in 1956 to showcase his
mother’s collection of nearly 2000 pieces of local art—jewelry,
pottery, weavings, carvings, and her own work as well, as she was a
jewelry designer. It’s now grown to over 7000 pieces, and moved to
its current location in 1968, where it’s continued to grow and
expand.
Violet Redfield is fictional,
but Millicent Rogers was very real! In her short life (1902-1953)
she was a socialite and heiress (her grandfather was a co-founder of
Standard Oil), fashion icon, art collector, and later an activist for
Native American rights. She contracted rheumatic fever at age 10,
which shortened her life and plagued her will illness, but she
managed to marry three times, fall in love with men like Clark Gable,
Roald Dahl, and Ian Fleming, and live in New York, Virginia, Jamaica,
and Austria before making her final home in Taos in 1948. She was
buried in her new hometown at the Sierra Vista cemetery on January 1,
1953.
Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879-1962)
was, like Millicent, a socialite, daughter of a wealthy Buffalo, New
York family, who married several times (four!) and was a patron of
the arts. She lived in Florence, at a famous Medici villa, and ran a
counterculture salon in New York before landing in Taos in 1917 to
establish her own arts colony, attracting people such as DH Lawrence,
Georgia O’Keefe, and Ansel Adams. She married Tony Luhan from the
Taos Pueblo in 1923, and is buried in the Kit Carson Cemetery in
Taos. Her house is now a National Historic Landmark and run as a
conference center.
One of the great Taos characters
is Dorothy Brett (The Hononorable! 1883-1977). Daughter of a
viscount, she was raised amid Queen Victoria’s court, but became an
artistic bohemian who attended the Slade School and became friends
with the Bloomsbury Circle before befriending DH Lawrence and moving
with him to Taos in 1924. She stayed there for the rest of her long
life, creating her own unique art (some of which can now be seen in
the Smithsonian, as well as the Millicent Rogers Museum and Harwood
Museum).
Martha Reed (1922-2010) actually
opened her famous shop in 1953, so I fudged it a bit for my story!
Daughter of artist Doel Reed, she got her own Arts degree in 1944 and
worked at the Philbrook Museum and Dallas Museum of Art before moving
to Taos. She first worked at the Pink Horse Shop on the Plaza, where
she became well-known for designing her “broomstick” skirts and
blouses in calico and velvet, before opening her own shop. She was a
very sociable person, famous for her “soirees with hooch” all
over town. I am lucky enough to own a painting by her, as well as
Martha of Taos original bought by my aunt in the 1960s!
Lorenzo is fictional, but his
cousin Benito was real, a man who (like so many others) was tormented
by what he had seen in World War II and was helped by Millicent.
The Karavas brothers first bought La Fonda in the 1920s, and it came
to be run by one of their sons, Saki, until his death in 1996. He
was an art collector and (as his tombstone says) “a great Taos
character.” Tom McCarthy is also real, and if you visit Taos you
can stay at his family’s beautiful B&B, Casa Benavides! They
have the best breakfasts, and he is full of stories of his long life
in Taos.
These are just a few of the
sources I used! I have to thank the Historic Santa Fe Archives for
all their help, too.
The Mabel Dodge Luhan Papers
Collection at the Beinecke Library of Yale (much of which is online)
Mabel Dodge Luhan, Winter
in Taos (1935) and Edge
of Taos Desert (1937)
Lois Palken Rudnick, Utopian
Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture
(1996)
Cherie Burns, Searching
for Beauty: The Life
of Millicent Rogers, the American Heiress Who Taught the World About
Style (2011) and Diving
for Starfish: The Jeweler, the Actress, the Heiress, and One of the
World’s Most Alluring Pieces of Jewelry
(2018)
Judith Nasse, A Life in
Full (2022)
Annette Tapert and Dana Edkins, The
Power of Style (1994)
Sam Hignett, Brett: From
Bloomsbury to New Mexico (1985)
Lois P. Rudnick, ed. Mabel
Dodge Luhan and Company: American Moderns and the West
(2016)
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