Laurel Davis Huber

Laurel Davis Huber turned extensive historical research into a dual portrait of writer Margery Williams Bianco and her daughter, artist Pamela Bianco. The Velveteen Daughter follows the relationship between the creator of The Velveteen Rabbit and a child prodigy whose international reputation once exceeded her mother’s. Huber places their family story within the artistic worlds of early twentieth-century Europe and New York, bringing figures such as Eugene O’Neill, Pablo Picasso, and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney into the background. She Writes Press issued the novel in 2017, and Simon & Schuster distributed it. Huber’s earlier work in teaching, communications, editing, and educational development preceded her move into fiction. She has explained that discovering Pamela’s connection to Margery led to years of investigation before the two lives took shape as a novel. The Velveteen Daughter is therefore historical biographical fiction, using alternating family perspectives to recover an artist who had largely slipped from public memory.