Mrs. Robert E. Lee: The Lady of Arlington

I have not read this book yet, but I feel it will be a great addition to my library.

I love history and when a friend recommended this book I ordered it. While R.E. Lee is very well known and much has been written about him not much is known about his wife, Mary Custis Lee. From her birth at Arlington to her courtship, marriage, and her life with Lee, Mary Lee lead a remarkable if not painful life as an army wife living through the Civil War in the south where her husband was a hero and a traitor in the north. By the end of the war Mary Lee had lost her beloved Arlington and her health. This is a wonderful book about a quietly remarkable woman.

An excellent book; well written, scholarly in approach, but I hoped for more, as modern writers have begun to tell more comprehensive histories and dedicate more attention to issues of race. Here in Perry's Arlington, with all of the perspective available from 150 years of hindsight, the slaves are just as they were in those times, at best mere pets, but usually just un-people, with little or no details provided other than their functions. Much more is known now about the Syphaxes and others, African-American families who lived on the Arlington plantation, and were indeed family to the Lees, who are rarely or never mentioned. Still, John Perry does justice to his immediate subject, Mary Custis Lee, and the book has value as a study of her life and the White fraction of her family... and the trials and tribulations of being the great-granddaughter of a titular American icon, Martha Washington, and the husband of another, Robert E. Lee, once considered by many as public enemy number one.

Insights into Mary Lee's character are revealed in letters and diary entries in this book which recounts her interesting life. As Martha Washington's great-granddaughter Mary grew up in luxury surrounded by extended family, but with great faith adapted to the loss of her home, health, family members, and country as she had known it.

Reading to my girls 6 and 11 years old. A wonderful education. Tough reading for them to understand especially the younger one. Names and locations become more and more familiar. This morning we read about Savannah and Hurricane Matthew is blowing in there today. We have read twice outdoors for less distractions. I am reading to them one chapter on Saturday and a second on Sunday. We read about her wedding today and new baby son is named after George Washington. Mary's faith is also interesting as so much of her prayers to God she is speaking back scripture.

I lived in the Washington D.C. area and visited Arlington National Cemetery and the Custis-Lee home a number of times. It is a lovely home, and I was always sad to think that General Lee,s wife had to leave her home. She never returned. I read this book as a teenager. It was one of the books that impressed on me the great sadness of the Civil War.

I read this book in three days as it was very well written, but did not, in my opinion give a very favorable view of Mary Lee. It portrayed her as self-centered, and like her father, more obsessed with the Washington connection than with the Lee connection. It pictures him as madly in love with her, I just cannot figure out why? I think it is very telling that none of their daughters chose to marry. Already a huge fan of his, the book only reinforced my good opinion of him.

This is a well researched and written book detailing the life of Mary Custis Lee. With many books with this amount of history it can sometimes be difficult to follow along. That wasn't an issue with this book. An added bonus was the revelation of Mary's spiritual life and her trust in God. She was an example of a moral and honest life in the midst of loss and tragedy.