Girl in a Blue Dress - Gaynor Arnold

This dazzling debut novel brings the spirit of Catherine Dickens--the cast-off wife of Charles Dickens--to
life in the form of Dorothea "Dodo" Gibson, a woman who is doomed to live in the shadow
of her husband, Alfred, the most celebrated author in the Victorian world.

Girl in a Blue Dress opens on the day of Alfred's funeral. Dorothea is not among the throngs in
attendance when The One and Only is laid to rest. Her mourning must take place within
the walls of her modest apartment, a parting gift from Alfred as he ushered her out
of their shared home and his life more than a decade earlier. Even her own children,
save her outspoken daughter Kitty, are not there to offer her comfort--they were poisoned
against her when Alfred publicly declared her an unfit wife and mother. Though she
refuses to don the proper mourning attire, Dodo cannot bring herself to demonize
her late husband, something that comes all too easily to Kitty.

Instead, she reflects
on their time together: their clandestine and passionate courtship, when he was a
force of nature and she a willing follower; and the salad days of their marriage,
before too many children sapped her vitality and his interest. She uncovers the frighteningly
hypnotic power of the celebrity author she married. Now liberated from his hold on
her, Dodo finds the courage to face her adult children, the sister who betrayed her,
and the charming actress who claimed her husband's love and left her heart aching.

A sweeping tale of love and loss that was long-listed for both the Man Booker Prize
and the Orange Prize, Girl in a Blue Dress is both an intimate peek at the woman
who was behind one of literature's most esteemed men and a fascinating rumination
on marriage that will resonate across centuries.