Lucy & Desi: The Love Letters; Bettmann Archive/Getty
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A new book is unearthing never-before-seen love letters between Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz
The book, written by their daughter Lucie, shares letters exchanged while Arnaz was serving in the Army during World War II
As Lucie tells people, "they're really incredible historic documents"
A book is shining a light on the early years ofLucille BallandDesi Arnaz's marriage — which took place as Arnaz was serving in the U.S. Army during World War II.
The letters the couple wrote one another have been compiled and published in a book —Lucy & Desi: The Love Letters— by their daughter, Lucie Arnaz.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Lucie shares how many of the letters were sent while her father was stationed at Camp Anza, a U.S. Army staging area outside Los Angeles.
"Sometimes he only had a pencil [or] she'd have to get him stationary, and then there would be hers back to him on her stationery, which are these pretty little blue things and then on the back is their Devonshire address and all, and I just thought, 'Oh my God, they're relics,' you know, they're really incredible historic documents, really," Lucie tells PEOPLE.
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The letters reflect both the burgeoning relationship — one rife with jealousy — but also the time itself.
"They were love letters and they were jealousy letters, and 'I miss you' and 'What are you doing?' and 'Why aren't you calling me?' " Lucie says, adding: "But forget just being newlyweds and being separated — there's a war on, you know, and all the stuff that you couldn't get and couldn't do."
Among those items that were hard to procure at the time were household appliances — like a refrigerator, which Desi's mom, Dolores de Acha, an heiress to a rum fortune who lost her wealth in the Cuban revolution, wanted during the war.
"It's hilarious because [Dolores] was raised in Cuba and she was very wealthy until they lost everything in the revolution, and she was still kind of the grand dame, very spoiled, 'You gotta take care of me, even if you don't have any money, I don't care,' " Lucie remembered. "And my mother was trying to get [Dolores] a new refrigerator because her refrigerator was on the fritz."
Lucie continues: "And you know how hard it is to get anything right now in the war — everything is rationed [but] she insists on a new refrigerator."
In one letter, Lucille writes to her husband about how she traveled all over town looking for a new fridge, couldn't find one, until a friend stepped in and found one that was just the right size.
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"And she writes in the letter, 'And so we traveled down there to pick it up and she said it's the wrong color,' " laughs Lucie of her mother's letter to her father.
The antics of Desi's mother came up in other letters, too — like one penned in 1943 from Lucille to Desi.
Lucy & Desi: The Love Letters
"You hate me when I tell you anything at all about your Mother—but God Desi—when my Mother drives me batty I talk about it to you so I don't know why you think your Mom is perfect," Lucille writes. "They all of them have their wonderful moments But believe me—when you are not around—Your Mother disappears. With me anyway. And of course the way she continues to ignore Des is anything but pleasant—or congenialness provoking. So much for all that—I'll try to keep her satisfied but believe me it isn't a cinch job—it's a 24 hour duty. She's dissatisfied with everything the painters have done—they are her painters so I'm glad of that!"
More than anything, Lucie says, the letters demonstrate a moment both in history and in the lives of a couple newly in love.
"They got married very spontaneously and their marriage was brand new and boom: the war happened," she says.
The couple's well-documented tumultuous relationship was marked by Desi's struggles with alcohol and reported affairs. They once filed for divorce in 1944 (albeit so briefly that the breakup was invalidated by a judge) and eventually ended the relationship officially in 1960.
Archive Photos/Getty
At the time of Desi's Army service, Lucie says, her mother was acting in movies "with all these gorgeous, handsome leading men," while her father was writing tales of his own about dinners with debutantes.
"It wasn't easy on their relationship for sure," Lucie says. "And you get to see all of that and how they had to learn to trust one another and, and, you know, they did and they didn't really."
The most incredible part of the letters, Lucie adds, is that her parents kept them at all — despite their divorce and subsequent remarriages (Ball to comedian Gary Morton in 1961 and Arnaz to Edith Mack Hirsch in 1963).
"Thee most surprising thing is that they still existed years later — that both sets of them existed," Lucie tells PEOPLE. "It's not she just that she kept the letters that he sent her, but he had kept all the letters that she sent him."
She continues: "You can just imagine she put them in a drawer somewhere, and she never got rid of them, which is really incredible to me, cause I always think, OK, horrible divorce, you're married to somebody else at some point, don't you go through your drawers and go, 'I don't need these anymore.' It was interesting to me that she kept them."
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