Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray

by Dorothy Love

Large Print, 2016

Publication

Thorndike, Maine : Center Point Large Print, c2016.

Collection

Highlands

Call number

Large Print Fiction L

Physical description

464 p.; 23 cm

Status

Available

Call number

Large Print Fiction L

Description

"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"-- "Despite years of separation and increasing turmoil, an uncommon friendship endures"--… (more)

Genres

User reviews

LibraryThing member lamb521

Title: Mrs. Lee & Mrs. Gray
Author: Dorothy Love
Pages: 400
Year: 2016
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
My rating is 4 stars.
This story is based on a real friendship between Selina Gray, a slave and her owner, Mary Custis Lee. The story begins when Mary is a teenager and finds the love of her life, Robert E.

Lee. They eventually marry, have children and live life. Selina is a young girl when the story begins with Mary teaching her how to read. Selina over time is put to work in the house, serving Mary’s mother and then Mary herself. While Selina is grateful for Mary teaching her how to read, she yearns for Mary’s father to set her free. Mary and her mother are members of a society that raises money to send former slaves to Liberia to start a new life.
As Selina and Mary age, Mary especially suffers heartache. Her husband is gone for months and sometimes years at a time, serving in the military while leaving Mary to raise their seven children. This novel portrays a loving relationship between Mary and Robert, even though Mary knows from early on in her marriage that duty comes first with Robert. In this story, Mary is seen to always put his needs first and herself second something Selina also knows firsthand as she has to put the needs of her owner(s) first, then Selina’s family, then herself.
While this novel is not brimming with action, suspense and chase scenes, it does a fine job of chronicling a friendship spanning fifty years between a slave and her owner. The two women in question were born and bred in the South with its attendant culture. Selina has always longed to be free and never forgets that Mary owns her. For me, the friendship aspect didn’t seem too obvious. Mary always treated Selina as a servant, with maybe the exception of when they went sledding as young women. The older Mary gets, the more heavily she depends on Selina. When they are forced apart due to the Civil War, Mary entrusts her home to Selina. This was not a book that really grabbed my attention and held it, but it was interesting to read this fictional account about a character from history that I knew nothing about and what her life might have been like. The author really did her research, and I thought the depiction of Mary in a new, more positive light than other books was a different twist.

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LibraryThing member Cariola

This historical novel is based loosely on the friendship between Robert E. Lee's wife, Mary Custis, and Selina Gray, a slave that Mary taught to read as a child. Selina became a friend and comforter to Mary and was instrumental in preserving some of the family's treasured artifacts during the Civil

War. Although the title suggests that the friendship is central to the story and the chapters alternate between the two women, the novel really promotes what the author identifies as a goal in her afterward: to redeem Mary Custis Lee from the negative reputation that history has bestowed upon her. Her chapters are much longer and focus on her suffering, sacrifices, and faith--which explains why, when I added the book to my library, I saw the designation 'Christian Fiction' in parentheses. Mary comes across as a bit of a wimp, in my opinion, accepting that her husband puts his career above the family and always willing to agree to whatever "dear Robert" wants and worshipping her pompous father, who later turns out to be not as deserving of her adoration as she had thought. She is constantly being called by one relative or another to nurse someone through an illness or await their death, despite her own crippling arthritis. If Mary has any minor rebellions, they are with the slaves--and are very minor. She teaches several of the children to read, despite her father's disapproval, and she and her mother were advocates of freeing the slaves and sending them to Liberia.

I can't say that this book was one that I will remember now that I've put it aside. It was just OK, but I did learn a few things. I did not know that Mrs. Lee worked to deport slaves to Liberia, nor did I know that her father was related to George Washington through his wife Martha Custis. This was how many of Washington's private papers and other valuables were passed down to her. Mary and Robert were cousins--not unusual for married couples at the time, but, again, something that I didn't know previously. Interestingly, C-SPAN ran a tour of Arlington House, the family home, this morning; much of the novel takes place there.

I doubt that I will seek out other books by this author.

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LibraryThing member wagner.sarah35

The underlying history for this novel - the relationship between the wife of Robert E. Lee and an enslaved woman - is fascinating and made me want to know more. This novel itself, however, felt meandering and seemed to shy away from the most interesting and controversial pieces of history. The

nuances and motivations in a relationship between a white women and an enslaved black women during the Civil War felt absent to me and I concluded this book with more questions than answers about these two women (which is fine when one is writing nonfiction, but novels have license to fill in some of those gaps).

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