Finished: Trust (Diaz) I picked up Trust to read after I saw that Kate Winslet has signed to do the upcoming series. It is a book about capitalism in America in the 1920's with all the financial ups and downs, so I wasn't sure I'd really be that interested, but what a good book! It begins with a book inside a book. The book, written by Harold Vanner in 1937, is called Bonds and is the story of American finance tycoon Benjamin Rask and his equally brilliant wife, Helen. Both very antisocial, they appear to be a perfect match and live the wealthy life in New York as the genius Benjamin, able to constantly predict exactly what the market is going to do, proceeds to multiply his already vast family fortune. Meanwhile, Helen is enthralled with music and philanthropy and spends her time having world renowned musicians of all types to their mansion for private concerts for a very small group of people, and donating to vast charities that interest her. Right before the stock market crash of 1929, Benjamin suspects that the historical increase in the Dow Jones numbers in the past few years can't go on forever, and he begins liquidating most of his own stocks. This, many claim, actually starts the downward spiral of the stock market crash, but Benjamin doesn't see it that way. Soon, the reclusive couple is shunned by the few people in their inner circle and Helen falls into some sort of mental illness. Benjamin takes her to the best sanatorium in Switzerland, where she declines into delirium and develops debilitating eczema. Her renowned doctor convinces Benjamin that Helen can be cured with a new therapy that will eventually come to be known as shock therapy. After her third treatment, Helen's heart gives out and she dies. Benjamin is bereft. He goes back to New York, where he has actually let his business suffer, and people who once respected his financial prowess begin to think of him as getting old and losing his touch. 

So, just when you are getting into the story of the Rasks, part one is over! The book within in a book, which I forgot I was reading, was done. Part two of Trust is all about real financier, Andrew Bevel and his wife Mildred. Andrew, whose wife Mildred was lost to him years before, is livid when Bonds comes out and the author has let it be known that it is based on the Rasks. He doesn't like the way he is portrayed and he most definitely doesn't like the fact that Mildred, who died a painful death from cancer, is portrayed as having lost her mind and died from psychiatric experiments. He begins to write his own memoir, and you can tell that much of what he says does coincide with the Bonds book, but he paints himself in a much better light, insisting that he lives by his father's favorite saying which was, "The best kind of financial profit is the profit that also helps the community as a whole." He also paints Mildred as fascinated by music, for certain, but also meeker and less influential to Andrew than she actually was. Part two ends abruptly with Andrew deciding he'll need a ghostwriter. 

Part three picks up with the story of Ida Partenza, daughter of a widowed Italian immigrant who is a printer and barely makes ends meet. Ida has written fascinating stories since she was a young girl. Realizing she needs to earn more money than her jobs in the bakery and the supermarket afford her, she answers the ad for a secretarial position. The hiring process is several interviews worth, but the end result is that Ida is hired to be Andrew Bevel's ghostwriter. He insists that she find "his voice", which means, make something up that is nicer and more exciting than his true boring, reserved voice. He also insists that this story is to redeem his wife's "reputation", yet he can give Ida no details in particular regarding any kind of intimate stories with his wife. Even though Mildred famously wrote everything down in diaries, there are no diaries made available to Ida and Andrew tells her to just make up some nice stories. There's a push and pull between Ida and Andrew and she manages to stand up to him at times. When he is finally satisfied that the book is almost done and to his liking, and that both he and Mildred have been portrayed exactly as he wanted....he dies!! Ida isn't even officially notified, and there are no instructions given in his vast will about the memoir she'd been working on, so it goes unfinished. Ida puts all her notes and manuscripts aside, makes enough money being Andrew Bevel's former secretary to put herself through school, and does eventually become a journalist and an author. Decades later when she is 70 years old, years after the Bevel mansion has been made into a museum, Ida sees a notice that the personal papers and letters of Mildred Bevel are going to be put on display for the first time. Ida, always feeling like she'd never found the true Mildred in all of Andrew's edits, makes her way over to the mansion for the first time since Andrew's death. She's on the last of four boxes, searching and beginning to question whether Mildred ever even had a diary, when she comes upon it slipped inside an old ledger. She quickly slips it inside her own papers (yes, she steals it lol), because as it turns out, no one else has ever really been interested in finding out who the "real" Mildred was. 

Then, we get to Part four. This is all comprised of Mildred's diary. The notations begin when she is already at the sanatorium, but she is not mentally ill. She IS wracked with cancer and doesn't have very long to live. I'm not going into any more detail, because we finally hear in Mildred's words exactly  how the Bevel finances and household and social life and relationship truly were. In the midst of her every day entries of how she's feeling and what her treatments are for the day, we hear the anecdotes we've wanted to hear all along, and they are eye opening. :-) I really can't wait to see Kate Winslet portray who I'm sure will be both Helen and Mildred!