The Secrets We Kept

by Lara Prescott

It’s been said that the typewriter was built for women—that to truly make the keys sing requires the feminine touch, that our narrow fingers are suited for the device, that while men lay claim to cars and bombs and rockets, the typewriter is a machine of our own.

THE SECRETS WE KEPT is a novel set in the 1950s about a group of women in the CIA’s typing pool and the fate of Boris Pasternak’s DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. The first voice that came to me when I started writing was the voice of the typists. I’d been reading the recently released CIA memos and reports pertaining to their secret Zhivago mission, and I wondered who typed those memos and reports. This led me to research the all-women typing pools of that era where I came across this quote by John Harrison from his 1888 Manual of the Typewriter: “The typewriter is especially adapted to feminine fingers. They seem to be made for typewriting. The typewriting involves no hard labour and no more skill than playing the piano." I wanted to play around with the idea that a typewriter was both a machine built for women—a machine that helped usher them into the workspace—but also an object that confined them to a particular role. Men could shoot for the moon (literally), but for most women the glass ceiling ended at the typing pool. But there is power in the typewriter and power in words! The typists know this fact and embrace it. And it is this power that first drew me write this novel.

They’d tried to push the OSS gals out for years—they had no use for them in their new cold war. Those same fingers that once pulled triggers had become better suited for the typewriter, it seemed.

wanted to pay homage to some of the early women spies I’d read about in my research. Elizabeth "Betty" Peet McIntosh’s book SISTERHOOD OF SPIES first exposed me to a world of real-life heroines, including Virginia Hall [recommended reading: A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE], Julia Child (yes, that Julia Child!), and the author herself. These women got their start in the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) during WWII, and, after the war, some transitioned to the CIA, just as Sally does in the novel. Today, we may have had a woman reach the top of the CIA, but, back then, most women—even those who had served their country so courageously—were relegated to secretary or clerk positions.

Secretary: a person entrusted with a secret. From the Latin secretus, secretum. We all typed, but some of us did more. We spoke no word of the work we did after we covered our typewriters each day. Unlike some of the men, we could keep our secrets.

The last sentence in this excerpt is what inspired the title THE SECRETS WE KEPT. To me, the typists were the ones who knew the secrets of the secret keepers. They were typing, recording, and always listening.

That Boris had rejected socialist realism in favor of writing characters who lived and loved by their hearts’ intent, independent of the State’s influence.

During the many times I’ve read DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, what has stuck me the most were the ways in which Boris Pasternak conveyed the importance of free thought. Through the life of Yuri Zhivago, Pasternak demonstrates that the yearning for freedom remains an indestructible force—in spite of political systems that seek to repress it. This theme indeed went against Soviet norms. To me, Zhivago is more about life and love than politics. It's about individuals who think and laugh and love for themselves, no matter the cost. That said, reading the book today feels just as relevant as it was when first published in 1957.

Frank Wisner was the boss under the big boss, and the father of the Agency’s clandestine ops.

Frank Wisner was one of the real-life people I decided to include in THE SECRETS WE KEPT—mostly because I found his life so fascinating. Even though he has a small role in my novel, his role as the head of covert operations in the CIA was vast. I recommend reading The Georgetown Set to find out more about Wisner, the CIA’s inner circle, and other power brokers in post-war Washington.

One might think this scenario plays out only in high school or college, but the politics of friendship are tricky at every age.

I’ve certainly felt the same way as Irina a few times during my life. When I was writing this, I was thinking about how hard it can be to make friends as an adult—especially if you are shy and reserved like Irina is. One would think that the anxieties of wanting to fit in and be part of the group dissolve over time, but they often follow you from place to place.

They had their satellites, but we had their books. Back then, we believed books could be weapons—that literature could change the course of history.

At its heart, THE SECRETS WE KEPT is about the power of books and how Doctor Zhivago changed the course of history. The CIA believed books had the power to change people’s hearts and minds, and thus, they effectively used them as weapons. I’m often asked if I think books still have that power. I know this much to be true: books have certainly changed my own life. Books like Edward P. Jones’s THE KNOWN WORLD, Toni Morrison’s THE BLUEST EYE, J. M. Coetzee’s DISGRACE, and Patricia Highsmith’s THE PRICE OF SALT all had a hand in changing the way I view the world. To me, there is no greater way to build empathy than storytelling. Books allow us to experience others’ lives, visit other time periods, and walk the streets of places we’ve never been. In a time where there is so much talk that emphasizes all that makes us different, it is almost a revolutionary act to imagine all that makes us similar.

“Darling.” She reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze. “No.” She held on, and something inside me, from a location hard to pinpoint, bloomed.

This is my favorite scene in the novel. A new love, something so unexpected it overtakes you. At this point, anything feels possible.

Dostoyevsky threw me a rope in the fog and began to tug. When he wrote that “the mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for,”

I share Teddy’s sentiment about Dostoyevsky here. When I first read the Russian great, it felt like I was being exposed to a brand-new way of looking at the world. Teddy, like many of the other young, idealistic CIA officers during the time, believed their work had a higher purpose. They wanted to change the world and believed literature could do it.

We unveil ourselves in the pieces we want others to know, even those closest to us. We all have our secrets.

Every character in my novel has at least one secret. Some have multiple secrets. Some are better at keeping their secrets than others. As a writer, I’ve always been interested in the juxtaposition of what people present to the world and everything they keep hidden.

According to my former employer, one can sum up the entire spectrum of human motivations with a formula called MICE: Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego.

During the Cold War, the CIA used the mnemonic MICE to explain why people became spies. They believed if they knew the psychology behind it, they could better recruit and control would-be agents. Sally, like myself, isn’t sure MICE can explain it away so simply. People—spies or otherwise—are much more complex. THE SECRETS WE KEPT is now out in paperback: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53285048-the-secrets-we-kept