Tonya Bolden: Hi, this is Tonya Bolden, and I am the author of Searching for Sarah Rector: The Richest Black Girl in America. I am going to tell you a bit about how I came to write this book, and then I will read an excerpt to you.

In the summer of 2010, a wonderful Connecticut librarian, Sherelle Harris, emailed me a short article on Sarah Rector. I was most intrigued. I had never heard of this girl, born in 1902. Born in what was then called Indian territory and is now Oklahoma. A girl born into a world of bust and boom, and a whole lot of drama. In reply to librarian Sherelle Harris, I wrote, "Wow, thanks so much! Will definitely look into it!" And I did. Reading dozens and dozens of old newspaper articles, pouring over pounds and pounds of old legal documents, all this for the making of the book Searching for Sarah Rector: The Richest Black Girl in America.

And now I will read from the prologue of this book:

Dear Sir, after your reading your account of the little girl Sarah Rector, I am writing to state that I hardly approve that part of your statement which says, "She cannot be hid." That's how John A. Melby of Gary, Indiana began his letter to R. S. Abbott, publisher of the Chicago Defender, a weekly paper. Melby's letter was dated March 15th, 1914. The day before, the Defender had run a front page story on twelve-year-old Sarah Rector, raising the frightening possibility of a kidnapping. It punctuated the piece at points with the question "Where is Sarah Rector?" Melby urged Abbott to do whatever it took to solve the mystery, even hire a detective to get at the facts.

Why were Melby and the Defender so worked up over Sarah Rector? Would they have spent the same amount of ink on any other girl or boy gone missing? We'd like to think so. But we know that Sarah wasn't just any girl. She was being ballyhooed as the richest Black girl in America, some said in the world. The scuttlebutt was that Sarah had an income of $15,000 a month, the equivalent of more than $300,000 today. Just as amazing, how Sarah Rector came into her riches. It's a story full of ups, downs, and turnarounds, followed by crazy goings on amid a heap of crimes. But the telling can't begin without a bit of backing up to some facets of American history that are often overlooked.