Her second big effort was Three Lives, three short stories about women Gertrude had known--two German servants from her childhood and a young black woman she worked with when she was in medical school.

She sat underneath a portrait of Madame Cezanne while she was writing Three Lives, and her style was inspired by Cezanne's way of painting. As Cezanne built up his portrait with layers and layers of brushstrokes, so Gertrude built up her characters through repetitive sentences, phrase by phrase by phrase by phrase.