Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray, Dorothy Love
Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray, Dorothy Love
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray

Author: Dorothy Love

Narrator: Allyson Johnson, Emily Sutton-Smith

Unabridged: 11 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 01/07/2020


Synopsis

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.

About Dorothy Love

Dorothy Love is an award-winning novelist who brings her love of history to her fiction writing in well-researched stories depicting the lives of nineteenth century American women. Known for her novels of mystery and suspense set in her native South, she also writes biographical fiction that painstakingly re-creates a lost world. A self-described history addict and a collector of nineteenth century ephemera, she lives in Texas with her family.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Karren on May 07, 2020

Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray by Dorothy Love, is a work of historical fiction based on the authors in depth research, her interest in the relationship and friendship between two very different women. The story is based around the two main characters of; Mrs. Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee and and Mrs. Seli......more

Goodreads review by Susan on July 06, 2017

A well-researched novel about the complex and changing relationship between Gen. Robert E. Lee's wife and her slave.......more

Goodreads review by Asheley T. on October 19, 2019

Told in alternating POV's between Mary Custis Lee and Selina Gray, the book gives a long history of the lives of Mary and Selina, and also Mary's husband Robert. There is so much in this book that it often reads like a play-by-play, particularly in Mary's POV. We find out about Mary's marriage, the......more

Goodreads review by Christina on August 16, 2018

I would give this a 4.5 as it was immensely interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed it!!! I loved the history and learning so much about these characters that were made so personal! Only 50 pages of the book talk about the civil war time, so the majority of the book is before that time. Highly recommen......more

Goodreads review by Cathy on July 11, 2016

Dorothy Love is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. She has a writing style that I love. In Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray she has topped my expectations of what a well written novel should be. Told in an alternating point of view, she tells the story of Mary (Mrs. Lee) and Selena (Mrs. Gray). Mary Cus......more