If you know anything about early to mid 20th century American history, you’ve heard the name of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the heiress who became America’s richest woman by the age of 30, a philanthropist, socialite, businesswoman, and political influencer.
Her story is told in Allison Pataki’s novel, The Marvelous Lives of Marjorie Post, a fictionalized biography pubished in 2022.
Whether you’ve heard of Post or not, I’m inviting you to cast your reading lamp on this novel about a fascinating woman whose life intersected with so many familiar episodes in our history that you never feel you’re reading dry facts. You’re just being reminded of what you once knew!
Pataki tells Post’s story as a fictionalized biography, which is a sub-category of historical fiction that deals with a real character’s life. The history is true, but things like the character’s conversations and probable thoughts are imagined to support the facts we know.
In Part I of the four-part novel, Post’s father, C. W. Post, is ill and is being treated by Dr. John Kellogg in Battle Creek, Mich. Aha! I thought. An immediate connection! I’ve eaten both Post and Kellogg’s cereals!
And the rest of Marjorie Post’s story goes on the same way, tickling your memory with common little things that give you that pleasant feeling of connection more than historical research.
Her father recovers, invents the coffee substitute Postum, which I used to see in people’s kitchens, and makes the family rich. Post insists that Marjorie attend board meetings to learn how the company is run, and she is competent to run the company when she inherits it from him.
Marjorie Post is an early example of a woman who moved as smoothly in a man’s world of business as she does later in the worlds of politics, social influence and style.
She marries into a wealthy East Coast family, and from there her destiny is set as one who will move and influence people in the highest circles for the rest of her life.
In Part 2, Marjorie divorces her first husband and marries E. F. Hutton, whose investment company is still part of the American financial scene. You remember the commercial — “When E. F. Hutton talks, America listens.” But Marjorie didn’t, apparently, and the couple divorces later.
During this time, though, she guides the The Postum Cereal Company through dangerous waters and collaborates with Clarence Birdseye to bring Birdseye frozen foods to the American kitchen through her expanded business, the General Foods Company. Again a point of connection! I grew up eating Birdseye fish sticks and we all still buy General Foods products!
She divorces Hutton and weds her third husband, Joseph Davies, who becomes U.S. Ambassador to Russia after World War II. Their life in Russia during the Cold War was also a fascinating period that saw Marjorie Post charming and befriending some of the Communist leaders of the day. During her time there, she sees how the Russian Communists have had to train themselves “to lie to themselves and believe the lie.”
Returning to America when Davies is recalled from the field, Marjorie realizes that this marriage, too, is not right. She divorces him, marries Herbert May and divorces him six years later, remaining single until she died in 1973.
Nobody is perfect, and Pataki makes clear that while Marjorie Post lived in a fascinating whirl of history and social glitter, her private life was far from perfect. Due to the flaws of her own parents and the men of that time being unable to handle a woman’s financial success, Marjorie’s inability to find—or perhaps be — the right marriage partner is made obvious.
Her relations with her children were sometimes rocky as well, and given her level of activity, it is hard to see how she could have had much time to be Mommy. It was interesting to me that one of her daughters was the actress Dina Merrill, though they didn’t seem especially close.
And while Post was concerned with the needs of the poor, she spared herself nothing. She designed and owned the largest yacht in the world at the time. She had a huge collection of jewelry that included diamond pieces given by Napoleon to his wife Josephine. She designed and resided at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, now owned by President Donald Trump.
The historical connections of this amazing woman almost eclipse the great influence she had on business and the feminist movement, so you won’t be bothered with any heavy themes or deliberate social messages.
You’ll just enjoy knowing about a woman whose life was like the diamonds she loved, sparkling but flawed.
