A Most Clever Girl

Fictionalized biographies of historical women are Thornton’s specialty (her most recent is And They Called It Camelot: A Novel of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis). Her eighth novel features Elizabeth Bentley, a Vassar-educated woman who joined the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) because of its opposition to Hitler. A social misfit, she also hoped it could help her make at least one friend in New York City. Elizabeth falls in love with her boss and through him becomes a spymaster for the USSR. Eventually, her usefulness to the CPUSA fades, and she finds refuge as an FBI informant. Bentley’s memoir (Out of Bondage) makes her briefly famous in the 1950s, but the Rosenbergs and others stay in the public eye, while Elizabeth has been for the most part forgotten. Thornton’s novel hews closely to the factual details of Elizabeth’s life but adds the emotional underpinnings that make her more than a lurid headline.