Carnegie’s Maid: A Novel by Marie Benedict

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            I don’t know how many times I have watched The Men Who Built America on the History channel, and yet I’m still not sure I’ve seen it all.  There are a lot of episodes that I seem to always come in partway through.  Despite this, I have found one man in particular that grabs my attention whenever I watch.  That man is the very prominent and successful businessman, Andrew Carnegie.  Why Mr. Carnegie has struck me as the most interesting, I’m not sure.  It might be because of the things he did (he did not seem to always only be out for himself, unlike some of the others), or it might have been because of the actor who played him.  Either way, when my mom and I came across the book Carnegie’s Maid while looking for something else, I thought of The Men Who Built America and knew I had to give this book a try.

                Sent by her family in Ireland to find work in America, Clara Kelley has very little to her name.  It is the early 1860s, and Clara is not quite sure what to do once she hits land.  Then, by a quirk of fate, the answer presents itself to her.  Clara is mistaken for another Clara Kelley, a woman this Clara suspects died on the same ship as her.  Not sure what else to do, Clara lies and pretends to be the woman she is mistaken for.  The problem is, that Clara Kelley was a maid to wealthy families back in Ireland, a position this Clara has never held in her life.

                To keep the ruse going that she is the other Clara, Clara must pretend all through the carriage ride to Pittsburgh that she is who she says she is.  If she doesn’t, the two other young women she is traveling with might figure out and reveal the truth.  These two young women aren’t the only ones Clara must fool, though.  Once in Pittsburgh, Clara must convince the woman who is placing maids, tutors, and nannies that she is who she says she is.  Then she must do the same with her employer, Mrs. Carnegie, who just happens to be the mother of Andrew Carnegie.

                Clara is actually quite lucky to get Mrs. Carnegie as an employer.  Since Mrs. Carnegie is not used to having money, she isn’t fully sure what to do with a lady’s maid or what their duties are.  Using her smarts, Clara is able to use Mrs. Carnegie’s lack of lady’s maid experience to pass herself off as one.  It is something Clara manages to do for quite some time.

                For years Clara is able to keep the fact that she is not the other Clara Kelley a secret.  With things going from bad to worse for her family back in Ireland, it becomes more imperative by the day that she keep her job.  That’s why when Andrew Carnegie starts to fall in love with her, Clara knows she must stop the attraction, no matter what she feels in return.            

                Ever since Andrew found Clara in the library not long after she started her position, there has been something between them.  Andrew loves Clara’s mind to the point that he even seeks out her advice on business dealings.  Clara loves the kind man that Andrew is (even with all his money he is kind), but she knows that employer/maid relationships never turn out well for the maid.  Clara always does her best to remind herself of this (as does the cook, Mr. Ford), but one day, after years of fighting her feelings, she slips.  While at first this seems to be okay, it isn’t long before Andrew shows his darker side, and Clara remembers just how thin of a tightrope she is walking.

                Something I found really interesting in this book was how divided the house staff was.  No one, except for Mr. Ford, would befriend Clara because she held the role of lady’s maid.  She, herself, did not act as though she was above or better than anyone else, yet, still, none of the staff wanted anything to do with her, no matter how friendly Clara tried to be.

                While I liked Clara, and understood why she lied, there was still a part of me that kept being bothered that she did.  Throughout the entire book I wondered about the other Clara Kelley.  What if she didn’t actually die?  I’m sure there are other reasons she could have been late to meet her carriage.  If that was the case, then what happened to her?  Did she have to go down the dark route that Clara feared she would have to go on?  Also, what about the poor man in Ireland who loved the other Clara and was looking for her?  Did he ever get the answers he was looking for?

                As for Clara and Andrew, it was sad to see a good love that couldn’t be, at least not without great difficulty.  While it may have appeared to some that Andrew had more to risk from having a relationship with Clara (problems with his family, society, etc.), it was actually the opposite that was true.  While Andrew had to worry about disapproving family members and social standing, the lives of Clara’s family were at stake.  If anything were to go wrong between her and Andrew, it could possibly mean the end of her family’s lives as well.  This is really unfortunate, because in a time when women weren’t seen as having much intelligence (in some ways we’re still fighting this now), Andrew loved Clara for her intelligence, and her mind.  Clara challenged him and made him think.  In return, Andrew helped Clara become more successful and independent than she could have ever previously dreamed.

                As Carnegie’s Maid is a work of fiction, it would be interesting to find out if there was a maid like Clara in the Carnegie household.  It did take Andrew Carnegie a long time to get married, even by today’s standards.  This makes me wonder about why it took him so long to get married.  It could be something as simple as he didn’t want to, or he never found the right person.  Or maybe there was someone in his past, like a Clara, that held him back from finding another.  Unless some long-lost letters or diaries are found, I doubt we’ll ever find out the answer to that question, but I sure would like to know what it is.