The Massey Murder by Charlotte Gray ✔✔✔✔

I'm a real fan of Gray's books - she writes what I guess could be called narrative histories, since the stories are true, but she writes them so well they read like a novel.  She also is able to meld her research with a narrative touch so everything holds together well.

This book is about a young housemaid in Toronto in 1914 who shoots and kills her employer as he returns home from his work day. The subtitle of the book : A Maid, Her Master and the Trial That Shocked a Country pretty well tells it all- Carrie Davies  is the 18-year-old maid who has recently come from England to better herself and help her family financially back home, John Massey is the master whose wife is away visiting family in the US when he decides to make moves on Carrie, and the trial is shocking because of the differing levels of society that are represented here, as well as the lawyers, judge, etc and their presentation of this case, plus the ramifications for the jury's final verdict.

Gray also fits all of this into the framework of a country at war, a newspaper war, emerging rights for women and a fast growing Toronto.  I found it fascinating.