Elite upper education is the new black. Or, more accurately, it's the new Bratz doll, with tarted-up student heroines taking over the chick lit shelf and associated mascara-wearing media.  It all started when Gilmore Girls' Rory went to Yale.  Or when Curtis Sittenfeld's Groton-inspired novel, Prep, hit the bestseller list.  It could have ended with Kaavya's plagiarism scandal, but the ensuing discussion of stressed-out, too-pressured teens (and hints at an unabashed sense of entitlement) is all part of the Ivy League mystique that is so-hot-right-now.  And so the paperback-craving masses continue to demand CVs with their fiction.

Enter Diana Peterfreund, Yale '01, Geology/Literature double major and certified hottie (her swelling bosom appears on several romance novel covers), author of the work-in-progress Secret Society Girl series, chronicling the plight of a smart, sassy "Eli University" student tapped by ultra-intimidating secret society "Rose & Grave."  Two SSG novels are in stores now; a third is on the way.

There's a one-to-one correlation between reality and Peterfreund's fiction, right down the last roman numeral behind each Digger's (as R&G members are known) name.  Crib sheet including excerpts and a couple spoilers, after the jump.

You've heard the legends, I'm sure.  We're the Ivy League's dirty little secret.  We run the country, even the states you wouldn't think we'd care about, like Nebraska.  We start wars, we coordinate coups, and we have a hand in writing the constitution of every new nation.  Every presidential candidate is a member -- that way, whoever wins, they'll always be under our thumb.

Eli University is, of course, an open riff on Yale (where students are called, duh, "Elis"), home to both major-party 2004 presidential candidates as well as their infamous secret society, Skull & Bones.  With 12 residential colleges and only two colleges' freshmen living outside "Old Campus," even geographical cues from Eli trace the physical realities of Yale, right down to street names (fictional Rose & Grave and real-world Skull & Bones are both on High Street).

Peterfreund inverts and mixes Yale society names for Eli.  "Book & Key" = Book & Snake + Scroll & Key.  "Sword & Mace" = Mace & Chain.  "Dragon's Head" = Wolf's Head.  "St. Linus Hall" = multi-university society St. Anthony's Hall.  Societies meet on Thursdays and Sundays, same as they do in reality.  Peterfreund's queen bee society, "Rose & Grave," takes its name from the Latin sub rosa ("under the rose," a phrase traditionally associated with clandestine organizations), and a reference to the "tombs" that house several of New Haven's elite societies.  Under the Rose is also the title of the second book in the series, in which (spoiler alert) a splinter group of Diggers literally meet "under the rose," after discovering a secret chamber in the tomb accessible only by triggering a stealthy lever hidden under a carved floral sconce.

Prescott College was once known as the "legacy" college -- it's where the President lived while he was at Eli, as well as his father before that.

Bushes Sr. and Jr. and first-daughter Barbara were all members of Davenport College.  Prescott's heir and resident playboy, George Harrison Prescott, is a play on the names of three generations of Bushes, starting with presidential granddaddy Prescott Bush, and marching through the H's and W's in the middles of Georges Sr. and Jr.'s names.  In Under the Rose, the "insatiable" GHP enters a nymphomaniacal relationship with protagonist Amy Haskel, which is only disgusting if you can't get the presidential parallel out of your mind.  Which, yeah, we couldn't.

   "What about the secret part?"
   "A surprisingly recent development." She leaned in. "They used to publish the list of Rose & Grave taps every year in the New York Times."
   "That can't be true."
   "It is.  Members put it on their resumes...."

The "secret" membership of Yale's secret societies is also a "recent development" dating to the 1970s, when roving bands of hippies left society brats quaking in their daddies' ritual cloaks.  Of course, society membership hasn't been very secret lately, either.

Remember Marissa Corrs, who played opposite Orlando Bloom in that costume drama last year?  Well, she recently took a leave of absence from Eli to concentrate on her acting career...

Here, Peterfreund borrows from recent Princeton lore.  Orlando Bloom ex-girlfriend and celebrity starlet Kate Bosworth got in, but deferred indefinitely in favor of acting.

"I mean she was tapped because they are so alike." Malcolm's brow wrinkled.  "You do know that's how it works, right? We tap people to replace ourselves. ...   Everyone is so worried about choosing a representative that they don't really think about the intangibles.  It's just -- ethnicity, religion, political leaning, academic interest.  We tap by genres, not souls.  Everyone is turning into a walking stereotype."

Seven years ago this was an issue for Yale's secret societies, too, though probably not to the extent of Peterfreund's comically compartmentalized world.  Black feminist lesbian Demetria Robinson, code name Thorndike, can't stop arguing with Greek shipping heir and resident misogynist Nikolos Dmitri Kandes IV, code name Graverobber.  Then again, Digger Harun Sarmast, high-achieving son of Pakistani diplomats who spent his JYA translating for the Saudi government, does bear passing resemblance to Afghani governor's son, translator, and Come Back to Afghanistan author Hyder Akbar, the Bonesman who became a groan-worthy anything-i-stani parody last year when he was arrested for burning an American flag... while it was still attached to somebody's house.  Ok, that's not a stereotype. That's just stupid. 

EDIT: Ms. Peterfreund corrects my analysis of Harun here.

--MAUREEN O'CONNOR