A general’s wife and a slave girl forge a friendship that transcends race, culture, and the crucible of Civil War.
Mary Anna Custis Lee is a great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, wife of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and heiress to Virginia’s storied Arlington house and General Washington’s personal belongings.
Born in bondage at Arlington, Selina Norris Gray learns to read and write in the schoolroom Mary and her mother keep for the slave children and eventually becomes Mary’s housekeeper and confidante. As Mary’s health declines, Selina becomes her personal maid, strengthening a bond that lasts until death parts them.
Forced to flee Arlington at the start of the Civil War, Mary entrusts the keys to her beloved home to no one but Selina. When Union troops begin looting the house, it is Selina who confronts their commander and saves many of its historic treasures.
In a story spanning crude slave quarters, sunny schoolrooms, stately wedding parlors, and cramped birthing rooms, novelist Dorothy Love amplifies the astonishing true-life account of an extraordinary alliance and casts fresh light on the tumultuous years leading up to and through the wrenching battle for a nation’s soul.
A classic American tale, Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray is the first novel to chronicle this beautiful fifty-year friendship forged at the crossroads of America’s journey from enslavement to emancipation.
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Violence - 1/5
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Summary
"True friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation." - George Washington
Mary Custis Lee and Selina Norris Gray's relationship had little chance of survival. Mrs. Lee was married to one of history's greatest generals, bore her husband seven children, battled significant health issues, and once stood to inherit a fortune. On the other hand, Mrs. Gray was born as a second generation slave on the beautiful Arlington estate, spent her childhood serving the Lee family, and grew up to marry a slave; all while dreaming of her freedom, which Mrs. Lee's gracious education efforts accelerated. The fact that the vine of these two lives continually intertwined, proves to be a story just waiting to be told.
Using recent discovery of Lee family artifacts, Love's research into this amazing family not only highlights the lives of two extraordinary women, but gifts her readers with insights surrounding the events leading up to, and resulting from, our nation's only civil war. Robert E. Lee's own words describe his personal angst when he writes, " Every day is marked with sorrow and every field has its grief, the death of some brave man." The war changed everything, the loss of Arlington inflicting a mortal wound to Mary Lee's spirit, from which she never truly recovered. Sometime later Selina would muse, "this was another of those times in the long friendship of Miss Mary and me, when getting my own wish (of freedom) would mean Miss Mary couldn't get hers." (to recover ownership of her beloved Arlington)
This is a book for readers to savor and appreciate for many years to come. It's outstanding. I received a copy of "Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray" from the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion.