Review: Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule
Jennifer Chiaverini

Dutton, 2015
Historical Fiction
386 pages (Hardcover)

3 stars


In 1844, Missouri belle Julia Dent met dazzling horseman Lieutenant Ulysses S Grant. Four years passed before their parents permitted them to wed, and the groom’s abolitionist family refused to attend the ceremony.

Since childhood, Julia owned as a slave another Julia, known as Jule. Jule guarded her mistress’s closely held twin secrets: She had perilously poor vision but was gifted with prophetic sight. So it was that Jule became Julia’s eyes to the world.

And what a world it was, marked by gathering clouds of war. The Grants vowed never to be separated, but as Ulysses rose through the ranks—becoming general in chief of the Union Army—so did the stakes of their pact. During the war, Julia would travel, often in the company of Jule and the four Grant children, facing unreliable transportation and certain danger to be at her husband’s side.

Yet Julia and Jule saw two different wars. While Julia spoke out for women—Union and Confederate—she continued to hold Jule as a slave behind Union lines. Upon the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Jule claimed her freedom and rose to prominence as a businesswoman in her own right, taking the honorary title Madame. The two women’s paths continued to cross throughout the Grants’ White House years in Washington, DC, and later in New York City, the site of Grant’s Tomb.

Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule is the first novel to chronicle this singular relationship, bound by sight and shadow.

--Description from Amazon

In the end, I made peace with this inappropriately named book. This novel should be titled “General Grant and Mrs. Grant” or some other variation as it is a beautiful fictionalized version of the relationship between General Grant and his wife Julia from Mrs. Grant’s perspective.

Her slave, also Julia, renamed Jule, features very prominently in the prologue, then disappears for extended periods. The assertions that this book tells a tale of a slave who “forged a proud identity of her own” are exaggerated. It’s understandable because what is written about Jule is confined to memoirs of Julia Grant, and Chiaverini admits that much of Jule’s life is imagined. This is historical fiction, I expect that; however, the title and description are quite misleading.

At times it can run a little dry. At others, I found myself rolling my eyes at how simpering and awed Julia is by Ulysses. Of course, this can be chalked up to the time period and that much of information is available through Julia Grant’s memoirs, which, I imagine, have a Barbara Walters lens. My interest in Civil War history and having read other historical fiction novels about this period is what kept me reading (and it’s our book club title).

It sounds like I’m complaining, and I am, but only a little. I did like this and found that I was entertained when appropriate and also emotional toward the end. The bottom line is if this is your type of novel, read it. If not, pick up something else.



A great fictionalized historical view of the Civil War: