According to Jennifer Egan in “Reading Lucy”, Egan met a friend named Luccile Kolkin, by the old letters from her in Brooklyn Historical Society. By reading Lucy’s letters for her Husband, Egan knew about Lucy’s life and felt there were lots of similarities between Lucy and her, and she really like Lucy’s passion. Both of them liked to write “to-do list”, they live in Brooklyn and they “both work hard and struggled to find time for practical necessities like cleaning and shopping”. In addition, while reading the letters, Egan also tried to guess Lucy’s personalities, what did her like and what did she interest with. Though Lucy’s life, we saw there were a lot of facts which reveal the society in that time. “I (Lucy) went to college. So what. I look for a job and people say, ‘Yes, yes but what can you do?’ ‘Nuttin’ say I.”  This showed the college education did not really matter; people were more willing to employ the men, because “men” are not equal at that time. Just like Minnie, a Negro who wanted to become a fitter in Navy Yard got rejected because she is a woman and a Negro. At the end, by reading Lucy’s life, it helped Egan to approach her Novel researching, a woman worked at Brooklyn Navy yard during WWII.