In Partnership We Trust with Victoria Christopher Murray & Marie Benedict

[00:00:00] What's good, family? I'm Nikesha Elise Williams, the host of Black & Published Podcast, and the author of the novel The Seven Daughters of Dupree. This historical fiction novel is about the secrets kept between mothers and daughters over the course of seven generations, and is told backwards in time from 1995 to 1860. The Seven Daughters of Dupree was published January 27, 2026, and is available everywhere books are sold.

[00:00:28] So if you can, please consider getting a copy of The Seven Daughters of Dupree today. This is the Mahogany Books Podcast Network. We've talked it through so much that soon AI can listen to us and write what we've talked through, you know? Okay, no, I know, but... No, I ain't out here! Yeah.

[00:00:52] What's good? I'm Nikesha Elise Williams, and this is Black & Published on the Mahogany Books Podcast Network, bringing you the journeys of writers, poets, playwrights, and storytellers of all kinds. Today's guests are Victoria Christopher Murray and Marie Benedict, the writing team behind The Personal Librarian, The First Ladies, and their latest novel, A Pair of Aces. But even though they're three books deep and working on a fourth, this partnership almost didn't happen.

[00:01:21] I would just pick it up, put it down, pick it up, put it down. My agent kept calling me, and she kept saying, you know, they're asking me about it. And I was like, oh, I'm so busy. I almost told my agent no without reading the whole thing, and reading is fundamental. Marie and Victoria both agreed that they became fast friends. I was on tour for a different book, and one of my friends had come with me, and she was driving, and I took the call with Victoria.

[00:01:46] And we were talking, and my friend turned to me and said, when we were finished, so how long have you guys been friends? I was like, oh, that was our first phone call. And she was like, what? Like, yeah. It was an immediate click. An immediate connection. And we both just not only got along really well, but we both were really wanting the same thing. In our conversation, they discuss why they see their partnership as a mission with the message.

[00:02:13] Plus, the hard conversations about race, class, and feminism they have with each other that then get transported to the page. And why they want readers to remember, you don't have to be friends to be allies. That and more is next, when Black & Published continues. Let's jump in. How did this partnership start? I know it started with a personal librarian, but where did it really begin?

[00:02:43] Ah, that's a good story. Marie, you want to begin? I don't know, I'll kick it off. I think it really started back with the story of Belle de Costa Green, you know, who's the heroine of the personal librarian. She was the private librarian of J.P. Morgan, who kind of helped build up his library to become one of the most legendary collections of rare and priceless manuscripts in the world. And I stumbled across her decades ago. I won't say how many decades ago, but when I was a disgruntled New York City lawyer.

[00:03:12] And I'd love to like kind of trot around to the cultural institutions and a docent mentioned to her to me. And I thought that's fascinating. And my jam has always been since childhood history and uncovering like these little hidden stories. And so she was kind of always reverberating around my mind and getting irritated with me for not tackling her.

[00:03:33] And then a couple decades or a decade and a half or so after I first came across her, it was confirmed in a biography about J.P. Morgan that she was actually a black woman passing as white. Now that had always kind of been rumored about her, even during her lifetime, but it had never been confirmed.

[00:03:50] And I knew at that point that I wanted to tell her story with a black woman that Belle had had to hide her identity for most of her life so that she could hold the position that she did in society. And I felt like, you know, that that wasn't right and that she deserved to have a black woman tell her story, too.

[00:04:11] And so I wanted to find the right partner for it. And I read one of Victoria's books, Stand Your Ground, which tackles, you know, the terrible issue of the shooting of young black men in our country. And it told the story from the perspective of a white and a black woman. And it wasn't historical fiction, but it was handled so beautifully. And so through our agents and, you know, at this point, I had been collecting information about Belle for years. I had been researching her. I had put a treatment together about her story.

[00:04:40] And through our agents, I reached out to Victoria. OK, so this is where the story gets interesting. So it was interesting before it was interesting. Oh, OK. OK. Because Belle's fascinating. I mean, she is. Yeah, that's true. Belle is fascinating. But this is where the personal librarian almost didn't happen the way it happened. Because, so I didn't know any of this backstory. Marie and I didn't know each other.

[00:05:08] And so it was only a three-page treatment. But the first thing I did was look up Marie Benedict. And I saw that she wrote these wonderful stories about women lost in the folds of history, really important stories. And Nikesha, I'm not kidding. At that moment, I was writing Lust. I was writing Lust for The Seven Deadly Sins and for Lifetime. I knew it was going to be a Lifetime movie. So I'm like, what does somebody who's writing important books like that want to do?

[00:05:38] What the heck? And then I saw a picture of her and I wondered if she had seen a picture of me. It didn't make sense. I didn't know any of the backstory. So when I asked my agent about it, she's like, Victoria, she knows you're Black. Can you just, you know? Read the treatment. Read the treatment. That's what she said. And then I read like the first two paragraphs and I never got past the first two paragraphs because it was about J.P. Morgan. And I couldn't find a way to get interested in J.P.

[00:06:08] Morgan. I wanted, the writing was fine. It was just, it was about J.P. Morgan. I'm writing Lust. I am not interested in J.P. Morgan. And so I wouldn't read. I would just put it, pick it up, put it down, pick it up, put it down. My agent kept calling me and she kept saying, you know, they're asking me about it. And I was like, oh, I'm so busy. And finally she said, no one's too busy to read three pages. And so I read about J.P. Morgan. It got a little bit more interesting.

[00:06:35] Then this woman came up about Belle de Costa Green. And then it's like the last paragraph on the last page said something like, no one knew that Belle de Costa Green was black until she passed away. I couldn't run to the phone fast enough. Because I was like, I think I blew this. Because I almost told my agent, no, without reading the whole thing and reading is fundamental. And then we spoke on the phone the first time. And I remember where I was.

[00:07:05] I was in Chesapeake, Virginia, getting ready to do an event. And I was like, oh my God, I want to write this book with this woman. Like the very first time Marie and I spoke, it felt like I had spoken to her millions of times before. Absolutely. I actually, funnily enough, I remember exactly where I was too when we had that call because I was on tour for a different book and one of my friends had come with me, which she

[00:07:33] probably would never, now that she knows what a book tour is actually like, she will never volunteer for that again. And she was driving and I took the call with Victoria and we were talking and my friend turned to me and said, when we were finished. So how long have you guys been friends? I was like, oh, that was our first phone call. And she was like, what? What? Like, yeah. It was an immediate click. Immediate connection. And we both just not only got along really well, but we both were really wanting the

[00:08:02] same thing to tell this story about to honor her, to come together in a way that could really, you know, shine light on this woman who had to really hide who she was for most of her life. Marie, did you have, this is a messy question, but I'm going here anyway. Did you have like backups in case Victoria said no? Not yet. Although it should have because I didn't realize how long it was going to take her to read that dream. She says three months.

[00:08:28] I, one of these days, if I ever have a free minute, I'm going to go back into our emails and actually look and see, because it felt like an eternity to me, right? Because, you know, for me, Belle had been like kicking around. She'd been waiting for her story. Early decades. And, you know, I've been gathering information on her, reading about her. And, you know, once you kind of turn your, as you know, as a writer, you know, once you turn your attention to a topic, it starts to gain like momentum within you. And you really want to dive in.

[00:08:58] You start to imagine scenes. You're continuing the research or it's starting to really become alive. So instead of like an irritant in the corner with her arms crossed, give me like, are you going to get to me yet? She was really front and center in my mind. And I was ready to dive in. So fortunately, Victoria did make that. Finally, who made the right call? Reading is fundamental. I'm glad you gave them the too long, didn't read response. Like, uh, it's about J.P. Maury next. I know.

[00:09:28] And I just read that now. Right? It don't matter what come across my desk now. But I always tell people it was three months. And I always say when Marie's not there, people always want to know how it started. And that really is how it got started. So when she's not with me, I say now, if Marie were here right now, she would tell you that it was longer than three months, but never believe her because she writes fiction. But I was also a lawyer. So I like evidence also. So one day we'll go toe to toe on that.

[00:09:56] But thank goodness she finally read it. And we embarked on this now. Multi-care, multi-booked, really transformative partnership. That's been such a gift. Yeah. And I almost blew it. How does it work? Like, I remember, Victoria, last time we talked and you talked about how you and Marie, you write every word of every book together. You're now on book three with a pair of aces, which we're here to talk about today. How does this work? Because I can't imagine inviting another person into my crazy.

[00:10:26] I do tidy up my crazy a little bit when Victoria's around. But for the most part, she's there for every step of the way. Do you want me to kick it off or do you want to go? Yeah. Well, I want you to because your question, Nakeisha, is what the question, that Marie had in the beginning. I had done a collaboration with Rashad and Tate. Okay. Yeah. And Marie had never done one. So that was her question. How does this work? And what I learned from Victoria was it's different for every book. You know, it's going to be different based on the themes, the characters, the structure.

[00:10:55] You know, I would definitely say Victoria likes to call me the treasure hunter because my treasure hunter isn't always has been like living in the past. I mean, if I had a time portal, that'd be super handy. And I wouldn't have to have an office littered with books and research material. So I think, you know, probably the first step is digging around and looking. You know, we talk about themes that we're interested in pursuing. I think for each book, we have wanted to tackle something different, something fresh, something

[00:11:25] timely to invite our readers into to really connect with them. And, and once we kind of think about the theme, start to root around, you know, I'm looking for, and it was different. First Ladies, which is our second collaboration was about Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune, who were two women who, you know, against the time, against all odds really became secret BFFs and formed the foundation for the civil rights movement.

[00:11:51] And with this book, we wanted to tackle women who weren't friends, women who couldn't be more opposite, opposite sides of the law and still managed to cross that bridge and come together to effectuate great change. So that initial kind of rooting around and research is a little bit different depending on what theme we're interested in tackling. And then once we've kind of agreed and our team has agreed on, because it's not just us, then the research really begins and the outlining begins.

[00:12:21] And the process, I would say our process, I don't know if you want to talk about that, Victoria, again, it's different. Yeah, it's different. It's different. But even when we were writing a personal librarian and it was one voice, it really was kind of almost the same thing. We each tackle a chapter first. One of us will do it first. So, but we've talked it through so much that soon AI can listen to us and write what we've talked through, you know? Okay, no, I know. No AI here.

[00:12:51] But I mean, that's how much we talk it through. That somebody could be listening and take it and write it. Because we talk through every chapter so much. I remember with the personal librarian, we were like, we should have taped some of these conversations. Well, that would have been handy. Yeah. We should have taped some of those conversations. And so one of us takes it the first round. And then we go through the whole book, because if you keep going back and forth, we go through the whole book.

[00:13:16] But then we switch kind of and read from once the first draft is done, we do the rest of the book together. But even the first draft is with each other's thoughts. So you talk it through and then somebody will take the chapter or go chapter for chapter and then do a whole draft and then you go back through it. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's a line first. So you kind of know what you're tackling. But that dovetailing is very tricky, you know, where one beat ends and the next beat begins.

[00:13:46] It's different. You know, sometimes you're writing a series of scenes where it's different perspectives of one day from each woman, right? And so that's one type of dovetailing. Another, it might not be that kind of interwoven hour by hour kind of exploration of a day. It might be like three years later and each are in different stages. So the editorial process is very time consuming for it. Yeah, it is. But you know, when we run into an issue with writing, as you're writing, I have a partner.

[00:14:15] I have someone I can call up and say, okay, this part isn't working. What do you think? Or if we see something in the book that we didn't want after we had written it, like I'll never forget. This is my favorite one because Marie got a little bit of an attitude one time with the way I had written a scene where Eleanor Roosevelt was talking to Mary McLeod Bethune. And Marie was like, I do not want Eleanor talking to Mary that way. Like she said it like that. And I was like, why not?

[00:14:45] This is how you're talking to me right now. She was so protective. How to protect Mary. She was protective of Mary. But I was protective of Eleanor, remember? It's weird how that works. You learn a lot of things about yourself, you know, and your own attitudes, your own things that you're imbuing the characters with that you don't even realize. You don't realize.

[00:15:15] And so having a partner to talk it out is like- You have a partner. You have a partner. And so while people would be surprised to know that it takes me longer to write a book with Marie than to write one on my own. Because that was my next question. I was going to say, how long does it take for you all to get- Not much longer, but a little longer because we're, you know, we're talking it through. The partnership means so much to me. Like even yesterday, I'm writing a solo book now and I always have to talk to Marie about it.

[00:15:45] And I always have to talk to her about my books because I'm so used to having a partner. There's nothing like having a partner that you trust. Right. Because I think what works with Marie and me is that we're writing soulmates. You have to have someone who I trust. She's not talking about me. She's not saying, I don't like you in this writing. She's saying, Victoria, they cannot stop and have tea.

[00:16:15] The mob is at the door. Another real conversation. Another real conversation. Don't you think I'd like a good cup of tea? I think too, you know, a lot of that goes back to when we started this and as we've continued, our kind of goal has been the same. It's not about either one of us being particularly wedded to a turn of phrase. It's more like, does this serve the story? Does this honor the woman, the women? Especially like, you know, with historical fiction, you know, you're including, that's inspired by real people.

[00:16:44] You have a lot of material that you have to sift through and decide, should we include this? Should we not include that? But, and to have Victoria to talk about it and say, you know what? It does this serve the story. Like there was a great, with the first ladies, a great little scene that we had, which was Mary McLeod Bethune driving North with Langston Hughes. And it was like just this worlds colliding, fabulous scene. And it was a great insight into what it was like for Black people to travel

[00:17:11] in the Jim Crow South in the 1930s, right? And how difficult that was and the challenges. And it was just such a great couple chapters and it didn't serve the story. And to have the two of us talk about it and say, oh gosh, we both love this. It's like, it's such a great meaty series of scenes and character development. But because our goal is in service of the story and in service of the women, it's sometimes, you know, coming together, knowing we both feel that way about it,

[00:17:39] is it takes a lot of, there's no ego in it. It's all about... There's no ego. There's no ego in it. A pair of aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray follows the lives of two very different women. Polly Adler, a white Jewish immigrant who runs brothels, and Eunice Carter, the first Black woman assistant district attorney in New York. It's 1935. The mob has rackets all across the city. And Eunice is on the prosecutorial team to take down the boss, Lucky Luciano,

[00:18:09] with some unexpected help from New York City's most infamous madam. Let's get back to the conversation with Marie and Victoria. So then let's talk about a pair of aces. Because you have a line on 298 where you say, history would probably have a laugh at this too. The prosecutor and the madam, the unlikely pair behind the downfall of America's most notorious mobster, if all goes to plan. But my smile fades as I remember that no one can ever know

[00:18:35] that assistant district attorney Eunice Carter and the notorious madam, Polly Adler, stood side by side against Lucky Luciano. I know Polly ended up writing like a memoir or biography or something because y'all sent me down the Google rabbit hole immediately. However, how did you all find this story? First of all, thank you for highlighting that because, shall I tell you, that actually for a long time our working title of the book was The Prosecutor and the Madam.

[00:19:06] We wanted that so bad. Thumbs it up. But it started with, as I mentioned, like Victoria and I are interested in a particular theme. And with this one, we really wanted to, you know, do something different and fresh for the readers. And we live in divisive times, no matter what your belief systems are. It's a divided society right now, a world. And we wanted to talk about how two women could come together and do something good for the larger community, larger world.

[00:19:33] And so, you know, we wanted to find two women who would embody that, right? And so this was probably our most difficult foray. We floated many ideas that were not initially accepted. And then I was in my rabbit hole and I came across Eunice Carter, who I knew about like vaguely. I was a New York City litigator myself for over a decade. And if you would have told me that I would be willing to revisit that world,

[00:20:01] I would have said no, because I didn't love being a New York City litigator. I'm grateful for that time. I learned so much. But when I kind of first looked at Eunice and saw who she was, what she accomplished at that time, that she went on to become the first Black woman prosecutor in an era of segregation. Like, I can't imagine what it's like to be a Black woman, but boy, I knew what it was like to be a young female attorney in New York when there weren't as many as there are today.

[00:20:30] And I knew that that must have been a monumental task. And then the next layer, of course, was she helped create this case against the mob on behalf of Thomas Dewey. And that was like, that is fascinating. Like, I didn't know where that was going to lead, but I want, like you said, I wanted to read more about it. And thinking about from a lawyer's perspective, how you'd have to build that type of case, you would need information from the inside. First of all, you have to find airtight evidence that you'd have to present against Lucky

[00:20:59] or whoever your target was going to be, that that mob had infiltrated and was organizing prostitution. And I started to think, we started to talk about what if there was a white woman on the inside. And that's when I first came across Polly Adler. And I thought, oh my gosh. And her autobiography, I mean, she was the most famous madam of the day. And not just in New York, like really countrywide. She created these houses, as she liked to call her bordellos, which were more like these glamorous speakeasies.

[00:21:28] Because they really were like private clubs with girls. With a King Tut bar. Yeah, it was. King Tut bar. And that's real. Like that was her real. That was real. And we just started to think about what if we brought these two women together, right? It would give you the opportunity to examine two women that could not be more opposite. White, Black, prosecutor, madam. And then once the research began on who they were and what their backgrounds were, they were opposite.

[00:21:56] Polly was a Russian Jewish immigrant who came to this country with no English at the age of 12. And Eunice came from this storied, educated background. I mean, they were opposites. And if they could come together to do this amazing good, that's when we thought this might be it. So did they really work together? Or is that we still don't know for sure? Yeah. Yeah, we don't know. I mean, there's no evidence of it. And as Victoria, when I were just talking about, like, she says in her autobiography,

[00:22:26] point blank, that she didn't know anything about it. But that could not be true. And if you, anytime you have, I mean, you're so excited as a historical researcher to find an autobiography because it's like original source material, your person in their own words. But you have to approach them with a grain of salt because they have their own agenda in those narratives. You know? Yeah, she wanted to stay alive. Like, she's not going to put in her biography. She's a big player. You know, that she works with Eunice Carter. She'd be deaf. She's never. Whatever.

[00:22:53] But, and that was my question because I was like, the way the book is written, it sounds like, oh my God, this is so likely. And then, like, I love all the mob documentaries. I watch all of them all the time. Like, and whenever it comes to Lucky, I'm like, how did he get popped for prostitution? Like, I just, it never made sense to me that of all the things that he was into, prostitution took him down. And so the book, I was like, oh, I got the whole story. The whole story.

[00:23:19] And you know, we have no proof they ever got together. But one of the things, and you're writing historical fiction now. And one of the things that I love about what we're able to do is we have the history. That's where we start with the research, the history. And then we fill in the gaps with the fiction. But even filling in the gaps with the fiction is based on our research of the history. And so it would be, you couldn't convince Marie and me that that's not the way it happened. Like, Marie wrote a book on Agatha Christie.

[00:23:49] And I'm convinced she solved the case by herself. Because it's not based on, we're not pulling it out of the air. It's still based on history. And you're like, you know, this really could have happened this way. This is what I'm going to tell people from now on. That Eunice Carter and Polly Adler worked together to bring down Lucky Luciano. I mean, in some ways, Polly is a stand-in for all the women who did help Eunice.

[00:24:16] You know, you can see from the book, there was really, as we like to say, like an army of women who worked with her, who provided testimony, whether they were girls, madams, other types of informants. The hotel lady. Hotel employees. I mean, and so to choose somebody and allow us to kind of deep dive into her world, really before the case even begins, it gives you such an insight into the workings of prostitution,

[00:24:44] how it changed once the mob did get involved. Because it really did. I mean, that's all historically accurate. So even though we have zero evidence that Polly and Eunice worked together, and of course write fiction, so, you know, it's imagined, but there were many, many women who helped Eunice and helped that case. And, you know, we do highlight some of them, the real ones in there, but who's to say it could be? Who's to say? And Polly's never going to tell. Eunice is never going to tell. Right.

[00:25:13] So it was up to us to tell. I'm glad that you all did. And Marie, you mentioned they're very different backgrounds. And you talk about it on page 338, where you say, I guess there is no way to tell who fares better in this godforsaken country, a well-educated woman from the middle class whose skin happens to be colored, or a poor Jewish immigrant woman who never got past seventh grade and whose skin happens to be white. And then it goes on. It's a toss-up, Ms. Adler, but one thing is for certain.

[00:25:40] No matter how difficult your beginnings, and they do sound appalling, you have some latitude to reinvent yourself and your history is something I can't do because I cannot change the color of my skin. And I was like, playing oppression Olympics is a lost cause, especially when you're trying to debate between race and class and immigrants. Did you all have this conversation in real life? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We wanted to talk about this. One of the things that I absolutely love about working with Marie, and I say this behind

[00:26:08] her back, to her face, all the time, is first of all, I can talk to her about race, about anything at any time. And if anybody comes to me, they're in trouble with Marie because she's going to take them down with her legal back. I'm not even playing. So I know how to rile her up when somebody says something about me. I get her going. So, but I love working with her. And I would say this if she were not here, and I probably did when we were talking before,

[00:26:36] I love working with her because there's nothing off limits about race. And because of that, we can write these real books and have real conversations. And so that's one of my favorite parts in the book because we talk that through because who is better off? You know, isn't that a great discussion? Who is better off? Our books are about race.

[00:27:03] We've chosen them purposely so that people can have these kinds of conversations. So we have them before. And I think that's what people love about our pairing. They could tell we've had these conversations. And not only are we not enemies, but every conversation I feel brings us closer. Yeah. I mean, these are issues that most people avoid at all costs, these conversations. Or if they do have them, they're acrimonious.

[00:27:32] People are digging in their heels about their positions. And that's the opposite of, you know, what we need. We need to be able to feel like we can talk about these things and bring them up. And Victoria and I, I think, you know, because we do and then we write about them, it's hopefully kind of brings people to a point where they might venture it themselves a little bit or even just think about it in a different way. But that I'm so glad, like Victoria said, I'm so glad you read that part because that really

[00:27:58] is that's really an important kind of crux of the story. You know, that moment and that realization between these two women who aren't friends, sometimes don't even really like each other, want the same thing maybe for different reasons. But there's this moment when they're like, it's hard for both of us. Yeah. It's really hard. And they each have their own kind of cross that they've got to bear. And it's the same and it's different. And it's hard for both.

[00:28:24] And we did want to make the point that, you know, Eunice can't change the color of her skin. What I enjoyed about the book overall and that scene in particular is the honesty of it, because it's a conversation that we are still having today in 2026 as we come upon the 250th birthday of the country that we're talking about race and class and immigration in very

[00:28:49] heinous ways sometimes, but never really talking about the root of the issues there. And so this book does that in a way between these two women and they can be used as stand ins for the very things that we're talking about today. In addition to talking about race and those particular issues associated with it, what were some of the other themes that you all were using as guideposts as you were starting out to write this novel?

[00:29:16] Well, I know for Eunice, and I think maybe for Polly too, their backgrounds were very important. Who they were and what was expected of them. So for example, one of the things, and I'm not sure it made it into the book as much because I have a partner who was like, the mob is at the door. One of the things that was so fascinating to me as I was reading about Eunice's life is what

[00:29:37] was expected of her as the daughter of two activists, two educated people, the wife of the most successful dentist. I say in Harlem, but probably New York, he was doing as well as any of the white dentists. And what was expected of her was to be home and to be a Harlem socialite. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. Wasting all of that. And that's not what she wanted. And so that was a theme I wanted to explore.

[00:30:05] A woman who had all of this ambition and she had a son. So did she send her son away for his safety or for her ambition? You know, she had a husband waiting for her at home and she missed in the book. It's fictionalized, but I'm sure those kinds of things happened where she missed major things. Because one of the things that I did get from the biography is her husband took a lot of ribbing in terms of her job. He took a lot of ribbing.

[00:30:34] Like, are you the man in the family? What's your wife out here doing when all of his friends, their wives were home doing the tea parties and those kinds of things. So that was a theme. Her background, what was expected of her and what she yearned for. It came through very, very well. As I was like, ambition is definitely a thing. I felt like you were talking to me personally. I was like, Victoria, get out of my business. Victoria Marie, get out of my life. No one asked you for this excavation.

[00:31:06] But it did definitely come through. But it's not just Eunice who's ambitious. Like, Polly is also ambitious, even in the world of vice. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and that was something else. Despite the differences between these women, there's a lot of parallels, you know. For Polly, in some ways she was, you wouldn't think of it this way. And this was something we wanted to explore. In some ways, even though she's white, she's more constrained in certain ways. She came with no English and she had a heavily accented English, which was a huge strike against her.

[00:31:35] She, as I mentioned, she came here at 12. Yeah, so young, alone. Alone by herself. She kind of ping-ponged around between family members and, you know, and friends and families. And she was raped. And this is all true by a foreman at her job. And when her family found out, they threw her out on the streets. And she couldn't get any work. And so she had a very limited realm in which she could operate there, despite the fact that she was white.

[00:32:03] And so she had every ambition, just like Eunice, to make the most of her situation. Now, like Eunice, Polly was brilliant. I mean, she was a very talented scholar in her home country. She had won one of these very few scholarships available for Jewish children to go for higher education. She won it against all the boys, which was, like, again, unheard of. And her father made the decision that she was to go to America and work and send the money back.

[00:32:30] That's a very classic immigrant story that happened in my own family. But for her, it was a huge sacrifice because she was on the cusp of really a whole different stage in her life. And so she came to this country and she used that fierce intellect and that ambition within this fairly narrowly conscripted world that she was allowed to operate in and to do something different. Just like Eunice, in a way, she was groundbreaking. She had her own house. And there were other madams that had their own houses as well.

[00:32:59] But hers was different than everybody else's. Her girls were treated better. She ran it like a business. She had other things on offer. She was highly regarded. She kind of operated in this quasi-underworld celebrity kind of space. And so she was, you know, she was extremely unique. And that was something else we wanted to look at. Like, these women had very limited options.

[00:33:23] And whether you admire their accomplishments or you don't like their accomplishments, they were major accomplishments. They were of accomplishments, yeah. For the time. And so thinking about the novel as a whole, I feel like in the beginning, I feel like Victoria felt when she was reading the treatment about J.P. Morgan and was like, I didn't sign up for this. Because you're talking to me about Dutch shows. And I'm like, I didn't sign up for this. When are we getting to Lucky? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:33:50] A lot of people, you know, even our editor was like, can we just get to Lucky? But there would have been no Lucky without Dutch. Yeah. Eunice wouldn't have built that case without Dutch. Right. Thomas Dewey's back needed to be up against the wall for him to accept Eunice's suggestions, you know. His whole story was that he was going to bring down Dutch.

[00:34:12] And then when he was killed and all this pressure was on Dewey to perform, to deliver, because, you know, his specific mandate was to bring down the mob. He had to open up the door to other agents and see what they could come up with. He had been kind of pushing against Eunice's case theory for a while. And the murder of Dutch opened the door to the case against Lucky. So we could have just slept in with Lucky, but it would have been only partway through the story, you know. Yeah.

[00:34:40] And then also one of the things that I had heard in an interview, I heard a grandson say that when Lucky killed Dutch, because that's a fact, when Lucky killed Dutch, it increased the stakes. Yeah. Because now Eunice knew how dangerous Luciano was. Right. And apparently they received lots of threats.

[00:35:06] The mob really went after them and chose her, I guess, maybe as, I mean, they did everybody. Because with Dewey, they told his wife, if you have to come to the morgue and identify his body, that really, yeah. I mean, they did those kinds of things so that you would just say. And they did a lot to Eunice. We didn't have anything specific. So the two of us built that kind of thing. But I remember the stakes increased when Lucky murdered Dutch.

[00:35:35] Then you knew what kind of person he was. Also, starting with Dutch and then building into Lucky not only kind of showed you the kind of the arc and the pressure and the intensity and showed you that opening of the door. It also gave us time to set up who these women were, right? To show you what Eunice's world looked like. To show you what she had managed to build before the mob started to infiltrate prostitution in a really organized way. It got to show you kind of how Eunice had been marginalized.

[00:36:03] Yeah, she was part of Dewey's prosecution team. And that was a huge public announcement. But the work that she was doing was the least interesting, the least desirable. So you kind of got a sense of where these women were and how things were changing as the novel progressed. I also like the illusion about Dewey running for president because I was like, oh, wait, he's the one who lost the truth. He's the one. He's the one. I was like, oh, I remember the famous photo. Remember that headline?

[00:36:31] Oh, the headline, like Dewey wins and then Truman's holding up because he really won. And I was like, oh, this is, I like all the little Easter eggs, again, all in the Google. What is it that you all want readers to take from this, you know, third book that you all have written together? When we wrote The Personal Librarian, I never imagined that we write another book together. Not that, you know, it was just this one idea.

[00:36:52] And then as we toured together, people started being as interested in the two of us as they were in the story, which was a surprise to us. But people were really interested. And we did a signing in Washington, D.C. I have a feeling this man had a lot to do with it. He was a white man in his 60s, maybe. And he came up to us to get out the book signing. He had purchased two. And he said, I'm going to find a Black man to read this with because of you two.

[00:37:22] And I'm really scared. I wish we had stayed in touch with him. I know. If he'd been smart, we would have. We would have, but it was such a surprise. And he was in the line, you know. But I think that did something to both of us because we were like, wow, this is a mission. I think Marie was the first one to use that word. We're no longer writing books. This is a mission. And we can have these conversations in Black and white. And so after The Personal Librarian, the books became a mission with a message.

[00:37:52] And so in The First Ladies, it was the friendship. And even how as friends, you're going to have to have difficult conversations, but you can be friends that will build on it. And we used a lot. We like to say that that book was semi-autobiographical because when our agent said, make sure you put in there friendship, we're like, okay, we'll just put in what we talk about. You know? Clothes, food, losing weight, you know.

[00:38:16] But then with this book, it was a little bit different because we'd shown the friendship and how the importance of that. So this is my answer after that long thing. My answer for this book is you don't have to be friends to be allies. And I think that is the most, that has been with me since we started writing this book, especially with how Black women have felt.

[00:38:45] And I need my sisters to understand you don't have to be friends. You have to be allies. Yeah. I mean, it was, you know, and again, I'll just say this. I mean, ditto to everything Victoria said. But as I said earlier, like we live in a very divisive time. I mean, a lot of these issues have been around even when things seem less divisive. But it's all out. You know, it's, everyone's, it's tough.

[00:39:11] But there's so much commonality between so many of us that I feel like we could come together and effectuate great change. And hopefully this book shows people that it is possible. Even if you don't like the other person, even if you don't love everything they stand for, maybe there's something that unites you. And maybe that thing is the thing that you can change, right? Yeah.

[00:39:39] The thing you can work on and advance, right? And we seem to have, we don't seem to be able to do that right now. And I'd love to see that because I think there's a lot of things we could all rally around or lots of us could rally around. And we could really make an impact that would help people. Yeah. I think that needs to be like the new slogan of the women's movement that fractured between Black and white women, that you don't have to be friends to be allies. Yeah.

[00:40:07] Hard conversations can be had so that there could be a coming together. But that's another conversation for another day. Yeah, that's what. We kept it real breezy today. Yeah, Maria, real breezy, right? Maria and I have those conversations, you know, because she's a friend who's an ally. Right. And she gets what we feel. She gets it. She understands it because she feels it too. But now moving forward, we don't have to be friends to be allies.

[00:40:36] But we have some things we've got to move forward on together. And this is so timely for this book. Like, when Marie found this treasure, it is so God-ordained to me. Because she found this treasure a couple of years ago. You know, because we needed to find it, research it, work on it to have it here today. But it's so appropriate for today. Yes. Yeah. Are there any adaptations in the work?

[00:41:04] Because, like, we've had Boardwalk Empire. And now we're all watching the Gilded Age. And then everybody's like, oh, Peggy and that man that she about to marry. That was Bella's mama. Like, those are her ancestors. I was like, oh. And we see J.P. Morgan in the Gilded Age. And I'm like, I need, like, a whole, like, Harlem Renaissance set of books between Harlem Rhapsody, Pair of Aces, Harlem Wedding, Love for Harlem.

[00:41:32] And then I just read Ashton Lattimore's Runner. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, I need all of y'all together in a writer's room. Giving me a show. Something about this period. Because everything is happening at the same time. Could you pass that message on? Yeah. To the people who have the money to do it. Y'all are Reese's book club picks. Go call Reese and tell her you need a show. We definitely say we've had a lot of wonderful interest. Yeah. Yeah. We really have.

[00:42:01] You know, it's such a tough business. And it's a tough time. It's a really tough time. It's a tough time right now for these kinds of, you see what's happening with media and everything. It's a tough time. They don't want these stories told. Or they're expensive to, I mean, historical stuff is. Yeah. Because of the period time. It's not as easy to, you know. So we're hopeful that. We're hopeful. Something. We'll hear that one day. And still.

[00:42:29] But thank you both for being here today. I really appreciated. The book was awesome. Congratulations on all the success to come. Big thank you to Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray for being here today on Black & Published. You can follow them on Instagram and threads at Victoria Christopher Murray and author Marie Benedict. And make sure you check out A Pair of Aces out now from Berkeley.

[00:42:54] You can get a copy of the novel from Mahogany Books and get 10% off your first purchase using code BLACKPUB at checkout. That's B-L-K-P-U-B. That's our show for the week. If you liked this episode and want more Black & Published, head to our Instagram page. It's at Black & Published. And that's B-L-K & Published.

[00:43:19] There, I've posted a bonus clip for my interview with Marie and Victoria about what they're working on next and knowing their strengths. Make sure you check it out and let me know what you think in the comments. I'll highlight y'all next week where I'll take you to the first ever Black & Published live recording from the American Writers Festival. And I said to myself, I'm not going to interview any white people in this book. And that freed me up. And in freeing me up, I said, I'm going to tell this from a black lens.

[00:43:48] It is going to be entirely told from a black perspective. Because we're proud to write for the white gays. What does it mean to gay? And if they're taking care of themselves and I'm taking care of them, who's taking care of the descendants of the enslaved? That's next week on Black & Published. I'll talk to you then. Peace. What's going on, family? This is Derek Young.

[00:44:17] And Ramonda Young. Owners of both Mahogany Books and the Mahogany Books Podcast Network. We really want to thank each and every one of you for listening to this episode. And if you enjoyed what you just heard, drop us a review and rate us on whatever platform you download podcasts on. We truly appreciate each and every one of you for supporting us and making us your go-to for black books. And we look forward to connecting with you all sometime in the future. Thank you again, fam. And always remember, Black Books Matter.