The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram

The Man Who Stared Down World War II in the Name of Love

By: Ethelene Whitmire

Narrated by: Russell Jordan, Nicole Cash

The dramatic and heartrending true story of one remarkable young man's account of love in the time of war, by a celebrated historian of untold Black stories

On the eve of World War II, a handsome young scholar arrived in Paris. The queer, Black son of a housecleaner, who had nevertheless been decorated in the halls of Harvard and Columbia, Reed Peggram flirted with Leonard Bernstein, sat for portraits by famous artists, charmed minor royalty and became like a little brother to famed researcher and writer Jan Gay. Finally in Europe and on the same prestigious scholarship as literary luminaries Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes before him, he ignored the increasingly alarmed calls to return home to a repressive, segregated America and a constrained life as a second class citizen. And as tensions grew and gas masks were distributed in the City of Lights, Reed turned instead to the new life he’d made: with Arne, a tall and dashing Danish scholar with whom he had formed a deep bond.

Award-winning historian Ethelene Whitmire unearthed a trove of Reed’s letters when she met one of his descendants at a lecture, awed that she’d heard so little of this charismatic man and his fascinating true story of love and war. In The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram, she introduces us to an unforgettable character who fled from country to country as fighting advanced, was captured by Nazis and outwitted them in a daring escape, and risked it all in a personal fight for a life of love, freedom, beauty and dignity in a world set against him.

Seriously sags in the middle

This was an interesting story, but the audio narration (performed at a fever pitch when reading Reed's letters) was hard to listen to. And when the audio narrator is at his most hysterical is in the middle when the book becomes extremely repetitive. It's just letter after letter of Reed seeming to be out of touch with reality. The basic letter is Reed castigating people for not helping him but when they do, he doesn't take them up on it. He refuses to leave whatever country he's in to come home because of his lover--another man. Of course he doesn't explain this so he just seems crazy for not leaving. I wondered why he didn't just act like his lover was his best friend and in a bad way so he wouldn't leave him in WW2 Europe but he doesn't. So it became super tiresome to hear the same thing over and over for about 2 and a half hours.