Author Lara Prescott at Pasadena Central Library

Lara Prescott at Pasadena Central Library (Photo – Garrett Rowlan)

Named after the heroine of Doctor Zhivago, Lara Prescott and her novel, The Secrets We Kept, headlined the 18^th presentation of the Pasadena One City, One Book event, held in the Pasadena Central Library’s Donald R. Wright Auditorium.

By Garrett Rowlan

The Secrets We Kept is a fictionalized account of how Boris Pasternak’s novel, Dr. Zhivago, was smuggled out of Russia, printed in Italy and Michigan, and then “smuggled” back into Russia as giveaways handed out during the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels.

Prescott’s address to the audience consisted of readings from her book and personal commentary. As such, she told the crowd how the first “voices” she heard were not those of the male CIA operatives who cooked up the plan to have Pasternak’s book read in Russia (where Soviet authorities had banned it for, among other things, its insistence of the importance of the individual voice over the collective), but the women typists who put the massive amounts of documents pertaining to the ruse on paper. (The CIA didn’t admit to the scheme until 2014.)

Prescott gave some interesting insights into Pasternak, saying that the author, even before to the publication of Doctor Zhivago, was “The Stephen King or J.K. Rawlings of Russia,” reading his poetry to packed auditoriums. He was a “rock star.” His popularity saved him from the Stalinist purges, as it turned out Joseph Stalin himself was a fan. Lara Prescott’s parents were also Pasternak fans, and named her after the heroine of Dr. Zhivago.

The writing of the book, Prescott told the audience, was “a leap of faith.” Fed up with her job as a writer of political ads and speeches, she decided to “do what I wanted.” It was a decision that led her to vast research, all the way to visiting Pasternaks’ grave in a grove of trees in Russia. She also to become aware of the “lavender scare” in the USA in the Fifties, where LGBQ CIA employees were purged from their jobs because of their sexual orientation.

All in all, an excellent presentation, marred only by an excess of empty seats, perhaps due to Coronavirus fears, which had led Library officials to cancel the book signing phase of the evening.