The Secrets We Kept

Lara Prescott’s debut novel, The Secrets We Kept, revolves around the publication of Russian writer Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago. Behind the Iron Curtain, Pasternak’s novel is seen as a threat to the Soviet State. Outside the Soviet Union, it is seen as not just an epic love story but also a device to influence Soviet citizens and destabilize the government. Prescott’s historical-fiction novel, published in 2019, concerns three women: Olga Ivinskaya, Pasternak’s real-life lover and unofficial literary agent, and two CIA agents who discover that working for the “Agency” requires keeping more than just State secrets.

This guide refers to the 2019 Alfred A. Knopf (Penguin Random House) edition.

Content Warning: The source material contains depictions of sexual assault and rape. It also contains depictions of suicidal ideation.

Plot Summary

In 1949, Olga Ivinskaya is arrested for her involvement with the writer Boris Pasternak. Because she is the famous author’s mistress and is pregnant with his child, the KGB agents who interrogate her assume she knows about his anti-Soviet ideologies and press her to write a letter detailing those issues as well as what she knows about his unfinished novel. When she refuses to give them the information they seek, she is sentenced to hard labor in the Gulag for five years. She loses the baby.

Meanwhile, in the United States, a young woman applies for a government job as a typist. Irina gets the job despite her lackluster typing skills. She soon realizes that her employers view her as an intelligence asset because she speaks Russian and her father was sent to the Gulag, where he died. Irina doesn’t fit in with the rest of the typing pool. When Irina receives special attention from Teddy Helms, a higher-level agent, the other women believe it is an office romance, but he teaches her to be a carrier of secret information. He does, however, ask Irina out on a dinner date after her first practice mission.

In the Gulag in Potma, Olga writes letters to Semionov, the KGB agent who interrogated her. The letters are not to be sent but are merely a way for her to chronicle her thoughts about her involvement with Boris Pasternak, whom she calls Borya, and her imprisonment. She thinks of her children—her daughter, Ira, and son, Mitya—who will no longer be little children when she gets out. While she is there, the news breaks that Stalin has died.

Boris knows Stalin’s death does not mean an end to the troubling times. He thinks of all his literary friends who were imprisoned or killed. He yearns for a quieter life where he can write in peace. To that end, he decides he will stay with his wife, Zinaida, in their dacha in Peredelkino, a rural community that Stalin established to keep track of artists. Boris does not go to meet Olga when the train from Potma arrives in Moscow. However, he eventually goes to her Moscow apartment, and they reunite. Olga becomes his emissary and literary agent. She rents a house, called Little House, near his dacha, called Big House. Publishers are squeamish about the new novel, Doctor Zhivago, with its critiques of the October Revolution, and Boris fears it will never be published.

Under the direction of his boss, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the founder of a new publishing company, Sergio D’Angelo is in the USSR not just to do Italian broadcasts for Radio Moscow but also to find a new literary masterpiece. He hears that Doctor Zhivago may soon be published, so he visits Boris Pasternak in Peredelkino to secure the Italian rights to the novel. Boris informs him that the book is essentially banned in the USSR, but he agrees to let Feltrinelli publish it in Italian. D’Angelo believes publication beyond the Iron Curtain will put pressure on Khruschev to allow it in Russia, but Boris knows there is serious danger in this endeavor. Olga is furious that he would do such a thing, putting her life in danger yet again. She desperately tries to get the manuscript back from Feltrinelli or find a publisher in the USSR who will publish it first but to no end. The Central Committee’s Culture Department gives her a telegram for Boris to sign and send to the Italian publisher stating the manuscript is a mere draft and should be returned as a new one is forthcoming. Boris sends it but only because he instructed Feltrinelli to ignore any communication from him that was not in French.

Back in the United States, when former OSS agent Sally Forrester returns to the Agency—ostensibly as a part-time receptionist—Irina becomes her ingénue and learns how to act on a field mission as a secret agent beyond just being a carrier. Whereas Sally is bold and glamorous, Irina is quiet and somewhat timid. The two women spend a lot of time together as Sally teaches Irina how to become someone new. Though Sally was initially tasked with finding out whether Irina is a mole, she enjoys Irina’s company and develops feelings for her, which could get them both in trouble. Therefore, Sally agrees to go on a mission to a book party in Milan for the release of Doctor Zhivago, which the CIA thinks could be used as anti-Soviet propaganda. At the party, a stranger approaches Sally and gives her a business card for a dry-cleaning business in Washington. She assumes he is another secret agent but is unsure. Though she gets a copy of the novel in Italian, Sally is unable to get much information from Feltrinelli about Boris.

Irina and Sally have a falling out after Teddy asks Irina to marry him. Sally distracts herself with work, gathering information on Henry Rennet and his suspiciously fast rise in the Agency. At a New Year’s party, Henry reveals he is on to her and then rapes her in a coat closet. When her bosses fail to acknowledge her dishevelment, Sally feels they been using her all along. She contacts the unknown secret agent with the dry-cleaning front.

After Irina delivers the microfilms of Doctor Zhivago, obtained by Teddy, she meets with Sally. Though she is engaged to Teddy, she hopes to maintain her connection with Sally. However, Sally calls their relationship off. Eventually, Sally’s name is redacted from Agency memos. Irina and Teddy go ahead with wedding plans until Irina’s mother dies. Irina breaks off her engagement to Teddy. Sally is fired from the CIA for being lesbian. Irina then flies to Brussels for the World’s Fair to distribute copies of Doctor Zhivago to Soviet citizens.

In the USSR, Olga and her children live in fear of imprisonment. One day, Boris learns he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Soviet Writers’ Union pushes him to refuse it, but he sends a telegram of acceptance to the Swedish Academy. The Writers’ Union rounds up other writers, including his friends, to denounce Boris before expelling him from the Union. He suggests that he and Olga should die by suicide together to avoid punishment, but instead he decides to decline the prize. Despite this, he is denounced on Soviet television. He is ostensibly condemned by “the people,” though many have not read the book. Polikarpov, a leader on the Central Committee, insists he write a letter of apology to the people, which Boris reluctantly does. Boris falls ill with a heart condition. Zinaida does not allow Olga to see him until just after he dies. A couple months after the funeral, Olga is imprisoned again for eight years, along with her daughter, who will serve three.

Sally goes to Paris and passes along information about Henry Rennet to destroy him. The man she met in Milan invites her to defect to the Soviet side. Irina goes to Vienna to distribute a new, smaller edition of Doctor Zhivago at the World Youth Festival. For years to come, she catches possible glimpses of Sally, who is arrested in Britain at age 89 for passing information to the Soviets.