Dorothea is not among the throngs in attendance when The One and Only is laid to rest. The story opens on the day of Alfred's funeral. Arnold brings the spirit of Catherine 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. At the end of her life, Catherine, the cast-off wife of Charles Dickens, gave the letters she had received from her husband to their daughter Kate, asking her to donate them to the British Museum, "so the world may know that he loved me once." The incredible vulnerability and heartache evident beneath the surface of this remark inspired Gaynor Arnold to write Girl in a Blue Dress, a dazzling debut novel inspired by the life of this tragic yet devoted woman.
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