Shades of Gray

The 2008 novel Shades of Gray by author Jessica James is a historical romance novel set in Virginia in the middle of the U.S. Civil War. The novel portrays a growing attraction between a Colonel in the Confederate army and a female spy for the U.S. Army’s forces. Although it is subtitled A Novel of the Civil War in Virginia, many readers complain about a lack of historical context that the historical fiction genre strives for.

Readers also worry that the novel de-contextualizes slavery as the primary – and often sole – reason for the South’s fight for secession from the United States. Instead, the novel dwells at length on the Confederacy being motivated by a vague sense of “honor” and “heritage,” and also maintains the ahistorical fable that most slaves enjoyed being slaves as long as they served masters who weren’t too cruel. The author introduces these plot and thematic points in the “To the Reader” section that precedes the novel proper, and they are what allowed the novel to win the John Esten Cooke Fiction Award, an annual award given to novels that downplay the realities of slavery and instead mythologize the South’s “heritage” as the reason for the Civil War.

In 1862, U.S. Army forces are enduring a tireless terrorism campaign at the hands of Colonel Alexander Hunter, a Confederate officer who engages in guerrilla warfare. Based very loosely on the reputation – though not the historical battle facts – of real life Colonel John S. Mosby, Hunter is the model of Virginian slave ownership. He loves his plantation home, isn’t overly cruel to his many slaves, and is motivated by the desire to preserve what he sees as his honor and love of home to fight in the war.



Hunter is the consummate guerrilla fighter. He and the men under him are fearless in the face of danger, seeking out every opportunity to conduct their terrorist actions in a way that will demoralize the U.S. Army. In their attacks they capture supplies, weapons, and prisoners; and at all times they are willing to die rather than surrender – die preferably in a suicide attack that would take out U.S. soldiers as well.

But lately, Hunter’s attacks have been foiled by the successful counter-intelligence work of a mysterious spy named Andrew Sinclair. Hunter has even once had an encounter with this young teen spy, who manages to save Hunter’s life in a close call situation. Sinclair’s horsemanship has allowed the wily spy to avoid capture… until it doesn’t. When Andrea Evans, a woman posing as a Southern belle in Richmond is captured by Confederate soldiers, it is revealed that she is also the spy Sinclair: she has been dressing in men’s clothing to carry out her work. When Evans is captured, she is first thrown into a horrible prison, but is then delivered to Hunter in order for him to interrogate her for information.

As Evans deteriorates under house arrest on Hunter’s slave-holding estate, the two begin their novel-long series of arguments about the war, their causes for fighting, and the differences between right at wrong. Hunter learns that Evans is actually a Virginia native whose father was a deeply cruel slave owner. Angry at his treatment of his slaves, Evans joined the U.S. Army in order to quell the Southern secessionists and to end slavery once and for all. Hunter’s argument is that it’s slave owners like Evans’s father who ruined slavery for the rest of the South – if every slave owner could just be nicer to his or her slaves, the war would be unnecessary. Hunter is also deeply committed to the ideals of honor and love of home – not really ever wondering why his attachment to his home has to simultaneously make it impossible for any of his slaves to have homes of their own to love.



The more they argue, the more Hunter and Evans start noticing that each is physically beautiful. Evans is taken by Hunter’s bulging muscles, excellent proportions, and general handsomeness. Hunter is similarly moved by Evans’s beauty, and the passion with which she argues. He realizes that underneath her desire to end slavery is a deep love of Virginia – a love that he manipulates in order to get her to see the “shades of gray” referenced in the novel’s title. It’s not that slavery is either good or bad, he argues. Instead, many slaves really love being slaves – being owned by another person, being unable to determine anything about their lives in any way, being denied basic human rights – just as long as the person who owns them is a “good master” who lives up to the Southern ideal of a gentleman slave holder. Whenever Evans balks at this kind of justification, the reader is meant to view her as “defensive, aggressive… and childish.”

Evans and Hunter soon have to learn how to work together in order to fulfill their deathbed promises to a mutual loved one. Though their contentious and combative rapport continues unabated, the pair also slowly grow to realize that they have deep romantic feelings for one another. But at this point, the novel finds ways to separate Evans and Hunter – two huge misunderstandings that play on the prideful arrogance of both characters. For one thing, Evans isn’t Hunter’s only romantic interest. The handsome slaver has also attracted the attentions of Victoria, a stereotypically gold-digging and spoiled Southern beauty whose main interests revolve around raising her social standing and continuing her life of ease and luxury through Hunter’s wealth. Although she does genuinely love Hunter, her feelings are sufficiently obviously mercenary that he doesn’t reciprocate – but of course, Victoria’s mere existence is enough to fuel Evans’s jealousy.

As Evans and Hunter fight their way back to each other, the novel takes us to bloody and gory battlefields and soldier’s camps, although never actually specifying which historical Civil War engagement is being described. We see many of the clichés about the war being acted out: fathers meeting sons, brothers meeting brothers, neighbors meeting neighbors, as they fight for opposing forces.



During the process of knowing Hunter, Evans has rethought most of her convictions about slavery, and now agrees with Hunter that the fantasy that “all slaves on plantations of good masters served out of love and respect for the kindness and oversight of their benefactor, and would stay on in that system with that master, if only they could.” The dreaminess of Hunter’s ideal masculinity is enough to get Evans to reject all of the convictions that she has held onto and which had propelled her to almost superhuman deeds.

Nevertheless, the novel ends bittersweetly, as Evans and Hunter realize that their love puts each in too much danger for them to continue their relationship. But for those readers who would prefer a different conclusion, James has rewritten the novel with a happy ending. That version is published as Noble Cause.