I'm Ann Bocock and welcome to Between the Covers.

New York Times bestselling author, Allison Pataki is with me today.

Her new book is her sixth work of historical fiction.

It imagines the life of Marjorie Merriweather Post, who was an extraordinary woman, heiress, socialite, philanthropist, businesswoman, trailblazer, an epic life where truth really is stranger than fiction.

The book is, "The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post".

Allison Pataki, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm thrilled to be here.

I am thrilled to talk about this book.

So as a reader, here's my first impression.

It's like, I'm in the same room with her.

It's also like you have let me peek at her private journals.

And I just read this and thought, I've wish I'd known this woman.

So that kind of begs the question, what did you know about her before and why Marjorie Post?

I'm thrilled you felt that way.

I think that's one of the best things about historical fiction and that's one of the greatest gifts that books can give us is to put us in the room and put us into the mind and the heart of these wonderful characters.

And like you said, Marjorie Merriweather Post was stunning.

Her life was epic.

You know, the stuff of epic.

And yet I think far too few Americans actually know the full scope of her life.

And that was really why I wanted to write this book.

We may know her name.

We may know that she built Mar-a-Lago and was this raining queen of Florida society.

Some may know the family Post from Post Foods, the great food empire that changed the American lifestyle and diet and way of life.

And yet I think very few people know just the extent of her life and just how many moments in history she had this front row seat too and this active hand in shaping.

And I just thought, wow, this is really, as you said, the stuff of epic and for me, it made sense that it would be a great novel.

Allison to do this well, you not only need to be a Cracker Jack researcher, but also a good writer.

And I'm guessing the challenge has to be finding that sweet spot between a history lesson and an entertaining read.

Is that the challenge?

Absolutely.

So this book took me six years to write.

It was by far the hardest book I've ever written.

Her life is relatively recent and there is just so much ground to be covered with all of these moments that she lived through.

And so as you said, it really was challenging.

And it's a balance because I'm not looking to write a very dry biography.

I'm looking to write a story that I hope will be immersive and entertaining and inspiring.

And so yes, you wanna draw on all the rich source material because really history gives you the juiciest storylines you could hope for, with her four marriages and her time in Russia and her time on the Gold Coast of Long Island, her time in Palm Beach, I would've been crazy not to pull from the history and rely heavily on the true facts.

And yet I wanted to create a story and an entertaining experience.

And so that's why it's historical fiction.

And you're drawing from the real life conversations and the real life moments and giving the reader sort of the front row access into these moments.

You knocked it out of the park.

There's nothing dry about it.

I'm gonna look at her life for a minute because there are so many parts.

She truly was larger than life.

She was the wealthiest woman of her time.

But what I didn't realize, she wasn't born to this, she wasn't an heiress when she was this young girl.

And the relationship to her father is so interesting.

As I'm reading it, would you agree, he was who made her, the woman she is.

Absolutely.

Marjorie Post and the Post family.

They had the most tumble of origins.

Their story begins in Battle Creek, Michigan when her father, C. W. Post is at death's door and he's going for treatment with Dr. Harvey Kellogg at the Sanitarium.

And while there Post comes across this idea of this new food industry, this new concept called cereal.

And Post says to Kellogg, this cereal stuff could really be big.

This could change breakfast and American dietary habits.

And the Kelloggs tell the Posts', "No, this cereal thing wouldn't actually really catch on.

This wouldn't actually be something that Americans would eat outside of our hospital."

And Posts' takes the idea and runs with it and cracks open this entirely new concept for Americans of convenient, ready made food.

And so the empire, the Post Food Empire, if you've ever had a bowl of cereal, you have them to think it really comes of age and takes off and soars as Marjorie the only daughter of C.W.

Post is coming of age.

And so she has this life that has this trajectory into incredible wealth and privilege at the same time as the company is taking off.

And then she takes it another step further as a young woman, as a visionary sort of thinking outside the box and thinking with a business acumen that the men weren't used to seeing in a woman where she says, "Hey, I would like to acquire this BirdsEye frozen foods company.

And I think that this idea of refrigeration and freezing and having food that's readily available all year long, this could really be something.

And the men, the experts say, "Nobody wants to own a refrigerator.

No restaurant wants to serve food that's been frozen or refrigerated.

No grocery store wants to own refrigerators.

And Marjorie keeps at it and says, "I'm telling you the American woman, the American household is ready for this change."

And so they introduce this concept of refrigeration and frozen foods.

I own a refrigerator, I don't know about you.

So it certainly has impacted my life.

And then that then adds to the Post Empire and her wealth as you said, and she just ends up being this woman of incredible wealth and privilege, but she didn't start off that way as you said.

She certainly didn't.

This is why if it wasn't true, I don't think people would believe that this nearly rags to rich's story, the whole Post cereal part of it truly could have been its own book.

It was that fascinating.

The first sentence in the book, it takes place 1968, we're at Mar-a-Lago.

And we know now where Mar-a-Lago is and what it is.

It sets the stage.

I hope you have a copy of the book in front of you.

And if you could, could you read from the prologue?

Because the first thing is Marjorie Merriweather Post is being told the president and the first lady are here to see you.

Yes, she was America's Empress and she entertained all the presidents.

So this begins Mar-a-Lago Palm Beach, Florida, 1968.

"Mrs. Post the president and first lady are here to see you."

"Thank you, Frank.

You can show them in."

I smooth the ripples of my slate-blue skirt and rise, my spine going straight, my heart's speeding to a gallup.

From across the room, I catch my reflection in the mirror, the thick glint of diamonds at my neck, my ears, my wrists.

Eyes a vibrant blue, bright and alert, even if surrounded by an etching of fine lines wrought by my many full years.

Long silver waves of hair pulled back, tidy and upswept.

Oh, and this room.

This grand room, it's sprawling confines pierced by windows that open out over lush lawns and sapphire sea.

Yes, it's fine indeed.

I've done some job on this place.

I clear my throat allowing just the subtlest of nods.

I was right to request that the meeting take place here rather than at the White House.

The click of footsteps on the stone floor, and I know that the president approaches.

I wonder if he suspects anything, if he knows about the offer, I'm gonna make him.

Mrs. Post the president and first lady are here to see you.

It could have been any number of presidents being announced by my staffer.

These commanders in chief keep changing every four to eight years, but I remain at my post to greet and host them all.

I blink, and I'm a girl of 14 dressed in bright blue, bandying with Alice Roosevelt at a White House ball.

And then there I am in command of a castle floating between cloud and sea, a space grander than anything my friends, the Vanderbilts or Windsors have ever enjoyed.

I'm Lady Bountiful, ladling soup to women with as much hunger in their eyes as in their sunken frames.

The prism of memory shifts yet again, and there I am crouching low surrounded by the murdered Tzar's treasures in a dark Moscow warehouse.

Next I'm racing through torpedo-laced waters, the Nazis nipping at my wake, the RAF bombers overhead ripping the sky with angry thunder.

Then I'm in my library, the perfume of are blooms intoxicating as I greet tall, timid, big-eyed brunette doing my best to put the young Mrs. Jackie Kennedy at ease.

But all of that is in the past.

I blink again, coming back to the present, as this new president and first lady crossed the threshold of my living room and stride toward me.

Ah, so she knew them all.

She entertained them all.

That just makes you wanna read the whole book right there, just those couple of paragraphs.

You did talk about how she revolutionized and reshaped American life.

And I don't think we can put that to mildly, not only Cereal, you talked about BirdsEye, Jello, Maxwell House.

How ahead of her time was she?

And she was a young woman.

She was a young woman.

She was an incredibly talented and brilliant woman, but her story arc sort of follows this interesting evolution for the role of woman in American society in the 20th century.

We start out and we see her in her 20s as the sole heir to this empire and this fortune.

And it's really sort of Edwardian when she begins and it's always understood that it will be her husband who takes the seat for the Post family on the board of directors at the company.

And then we see her evolve and we see her step into her power a little bit more.

We see what happens with World War I and the Great Depression and how that sort of shakes up society a bit.

And then we see her really step into her own in the Franklin Roosevelt presidency, where for the first time she demands a place for herself at the table.

We see her say, "Enough of this with my husband taking my place."

She's the brightest, one of them all, she's been calling the shots just from behind the scenes the whole time anyway, she really stepped to of the fore and it's that at that time she becomes a leader not only in business, but she also becomes the first United States Ambassadors to the Soviet Union and has this incredible experience in Moscow that forever changes her life.

And so she really evolves and finds her voice.

And I loved exploring that over the course of her life, how her arc changes as the American society changes really over a full, almost century.

Absolutely.

Yes, it was decades before she was allowed to sit on her own board.

She's the richest woman in America by I think the age of 30, but what she wasn't so successful in was her marriages, four of them.

The first one, there was this clash between old money and new money.

And there is this thought that maybe her second marriage was the inspiration for the great Gatsby.

I don't know, is that a myth?

Absolutely.

When you are writing historical fiction, you can pull from the mythology as well, part of the mythology.

Marjorie and the great love of her life, E.F. Hutton, Ned Hutton, they were huge Palm Beach fixtures, they built Mar-a-Lago, they built the Sea Cloud, but one of the things they were doing was just partying, up and down the East Coast, including on the Gold Coast of Long Island hanging out with people like F. Scott Fitzgerald.

And so the rumor was that they were part of the inspiration behind the Great Gatsby.

I could see it the way that you wrote it.

I could absolutely see it Allison.

The third husband was the one that really intrigued me, Joseph Davies, he was the ambassador to the Soviet Union.

As you said, she became the Ambassadors.

Now we need a little history lesson here because under Stalin, the art, the valuables of the Tsars were seized and put in, I don't know how many warehouses, but like filled top to bottom with these treasures.

And then here comes Marjorie in her post.

And tell me about when she went to the warehouses and what happened.

Absolutely.

So the United States had not recognized the Soviet government of Russia because they had murdered the Tsars.

And so in the 1930s as the storm cloud of World War II are looming, Franklin Roosevelt, the president at the time recognizes, hey, as bad as Stalin is, this Hitler in Germany might even be worse.

And so the worst case scenario for the United States and the world would be if Stalin and Hitler were to align.

So he sent Marjorie Merriweather Post and her husband at the time, Joe Davies to the Soviet Union with this directive, befriend the Russians, do not let them fall into the arms of the Nazis and of Hitler in this coming clash of World War II.

And so Marjorie goes to Moscow and she arrives in this moment in history where it's 1930s, the Soviet regime is relatively new.

It has been years of famine and poverty and violence and bloodshed for the Russians, and they are strapped for cash.

And they have seized, as you said, centuries of priceless treasure from the Romanov, the Tsars and the entire Russian aristocracy and their Soviets.

So they place no premium on the art or the culture or the provenance of this priceless treasure.

They've looted these castles and palaces and churches and monasteries, they've collected all of this treasure.

And as you said, stored them in warehouses and it's piled up collecting dust.

And what do the Soviets need more than anything at this time?

They need cash.

So they are willing to sell this priceless treasure to the highest bidder and Marjorie arrives fresh from the United States, she's an American millionaire, she has cash, she loves art.

She loves culture.

She loves history and she loves all things European.

So Marjorie her eyes pop out on stems.

And she goes on this buying frenzy while she's in Russia, acquiring all of this priceless Russian treasure.

And she's shocked and a little bit appalled, but also thrilled that the Soviet it's just weigh it and they will sell it one rubal per gram.

And so she can't believe they place no sentimental attachment to the value of this treasure.

So she buys precious items like Catherine the Greats' Royal porcelain.

She buys a diamond that belongs to Anastasia and just scores and scores of pieces that are just priceless Russian treasure.

And it sets her on the trajectory of becoming one of the world's largest collectors of Imperial Russian art.

And a lot of that is still available to the public today to be seen and enjoyed because Marjorie saved it.

And it's at her home in Washington D.C. Hillwood, it's a museum now.

I think you can also see a couple of the pieces of jewelry that she bought at the Smithsonian.

I think there was a necklace that Napoleon gave to his wife and earrings that Marie Antoinette had, but Marjorie wore these pieces, I kind of wanna underscore that, she was happy wearing them.

Yes, and that is why she was known as America's Empress.

She loved America.

She loved capitalism.

She knew her life story was a story that could never have happened in communist Russia.

It was an American success story.

But she loved herself, some Royal jewelry and some bling.

And obviously she loved to build herself palatial homes like Mar-a-Lago.

She also had, one of the world's largest yachts, it was bigger than the British Royal family yacht, it sailed right out of Palm Beach, it was the Sea Cloud.

So Marjorie as hardworking and industrious and down to earth she was in so many ways.

She also lived this life of incredible opulence and luxury.

And she really enjoyed the fruits of the success she and her family had on the business side.

As well as that, she did generous philanthropic work.

And if you would talk a little bit about that, you mentioned the Sea Cloud.

Well, the Sea Cloud had played a pretty big part during the war.

Absolutely.

I always got the sense with Marjorie that she was at her happiest and her most fulfilled when she was serving a cause larger than herself.

And so that was one of the things I really loved and admired about her was in spite of this great wealth, she said, "My wealth would've been a burden on my soul, had I not found ways to use it to serve others.

And so you're exactly right.

World War I breaks out, Marjorie funds the largest Red Cross hospital in wartime France.

The Great Depression sets in, Marjorie opens up food kitchens across New York and serves the hungry women and children and men of Hell's Kitchen.

And she does it in Marjorie style, there are beautiful tablecloths, there are fresh cut flowers.

She hires unemployed men and gives them white tuxedo coats and she has them serve as her waiters.

She treated people with dignity and she threw herself into serving humanity.

And as you said, World War II breaks out, she gives the Sea Cloud her gorgeous yacht to the United States Navy for a dollar a year lease so that it can serve in World War II.

And she did all of this because she truly had this heart for I think making the world a more just, more beautiful place.

And I think that one of the things I really loved was she treated people with dignity, whether you were a hungry mother in Hell's Kitchen, New York city, or you were the king of England who was also a friend of hers.

She really treated people with respect and she really, I think, served humanity.

And so that really makes her likable, even though you see, yeah, she's a millionaire, yeah, she has Marie Antoinette's and Napoleon's jewelry, but yes, she also does so much to leave the world a better place.

I know there was one scene in the book where she was impressed to build a hospital, a hospital in Europe during the war.

And she had I guess, all of the pieces were here and they were gonna be shipped over and then it sunk.

Yeah, and that's true.

And that actually happened.

An entire ship filled with military equipment, enough supplies to fund and equip an entire hospital.

And it sinks in the water on the way to France.

And she gets the notice.

And in true Marjorie style, she doesn't skip a beat.

She says, "All right, well, get the next ship ready."

And she sends all the equipment again and goes on and it becomes the Red Cross's largest wartime hospital in France.

And Marjorie did not do anything by half measures or on a small scale.

Marjorie did everything to the optimal.

And so that applied with whether she was throwing a great party or whether she was pouring herself into a philanthropic cause.

You have such gorgeous descriptions of her homes and Mar-a-Lago may be the best known because now it is a home of a former president.

It was always intended to be a winter White House.

I didn't know that, that she wanted that.

And then there's Hillwood in D.C. which today is a museum, correct?

Today anyone can visit?

Absolutely, yep.

And my visit there was what originally inspired me to write this book.

I just walked in and I said, "This woman is amazing.

This life was amazing.

This is a great story."

Yes, so Hillwood is a museum that anyone can enjoy.

That's gonna be on my list because after reading this, I didn't know anything, I'm being very honest here.

I didn't know about Hillwood I'm going.

Your prior writing has strong women in history always.

Is there a challenge when you come to this one because this is not in the far past, this is someone that if we didn't know her, we know of her, we know of her famous family, her obstacles, the glass ceiling.

Was there a challenge for you for someone that yes, we do know some things about her.

That is exactly right.

You hit the nail on the head.

Marjorie's third daughter was Dina Merrill, the movie star and Dina Merrill passed away while I was researching this book.

This is such recent history.

I've written about a lot of women who have been gone for 300 years and there are huge holes in the historical record.

People are alive who were in the scenes that I'm writing about in my fiction novel.

Her grandchildren are very much still around.

And I felt this pressure that was unlike any of the other books to not only honor her legacy because of how inspiring and remarkable I found her to be.

But also this pressure to pass a credibility test with the people who really know this history and know this story.

And I have to say, I've connected with some of her family members through this process and also the staff at Hillwood, they are PhD historians and archivists who work all day every day to preserve her legacy.

They know this stuff.

And so when I got the nod of approval from Hillwood and then from Marjorie Merriweather Posts amazing living family members, that was just a high point for me because I just felt the whole time, please let me do her story justice.

What do you think she could have accomplished if she were living today?

I have thought about that so often in recent days, I think if she were living today, we would all wanna vote for her for president.

I have no doubt about that.

I wanna get a bracelet that says what would Marjorie do?

Because she was a doer and whatever she put her mind to she was able to accomplish.

So yes, I think had she been alive today, she would be certainly running her family's corporation, but probably also running the world.

Her father C.W.

Post said about her, "You put Marjorie on a desert island and you come back a few days later, she would've organized the grains of sand."

I love it.

I want that bracelet too.

I know, right?

She was in a class by herself.

And as you write in the book, as far as I'm concerned to her, her Midwestern values grounded her, and read the book because that it is such a fascinating look at a simply remarkable woman, Marjorie Merriweather Post.

And your novel brings it all to life.

Thank you for writing it.

I see why you got the seal of approval from the family.

The book is, "The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post".

Alison Pataki, thank you so much for spending time with me today.

Thank you for having me.

I'm Anne Bocock.

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