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It all started with two boys and a bicycle shop. Wilbur and Orville Wright, both unsuited to college and disinclined to leave home, jumped on the popular new fad of bicycle riding and opened a shop in Dayton, Ohio. Repairing and selling soon led to tinkering and building as the brothers offered improved models to their eager customers. Amid their success, a new dream began to take shape. Engineers across the world were puzzling over how to build a powered flying machine—and Wilbur and Orville wanted in on the challenge. But their younger sister, Katharine, knew they couldn't do it without her. The three siblings made a pact: the three of them would solve the problem of human flight.
As her brothers obsessed over blueprints and risked life and limb testing new models on the sandy beaches of North Carolina, Katharine became the mastermind behind the scenes of their inventions. She sourced materials, managed communications, and kept Wilbur and Orville focused on their goal—even when it seemed hopeless. And in 1903, the Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight of humankind.
What followed was the kind of fame and fortune the Wrights had never imagined. The siblings traveled the world to demonstrate their invention, trained other pilots, and built new machines that could fly higher and farther. But at the height of their success, tragedy wrenched the Wright family apart ... and forced Katharine to make an impossible choice that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
From international bestselling author Tracey Enerson Wood, Katharine, the Wright Sister is an unforgettable novel that shines a spotlight on one of the most important and overlooked women in history, and the sacrifices she made so that others might fly.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 24, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9798892739108
- File size: 346187 KB
- Duration: 12:01:13
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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July 22, 2024
Wood’s charming latest (after The President’s Wife) highlights the contributions Katharine Wright (1874–1929) made to her brothers’ innovations in aviation. Katharine, brazen and spunky, supports her older siblings Orville and Wilbur’s fascination with manned flying machines, suggesting they invent planes in the back of their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. After their mother dies, she keeps house for the family, and though her brothers never finish high school, she graduates from Oberlin and becomes a teacher. She puts her prospects for marriage on hold to help her brothers design the aircraft by studying bird anatomy and recommending fabric for the wings, and she helps write a letter to the Smithsonian asking for information about flying machines. She even identifies Kitty Hawk as the perfect spot to test their plane. Over the years, she makes more sacrifices, as when she gives up her teaching job to nurse Orville after a devastating accident. Told from the points of view of Orville, Wilbur, and Katharine, the lengthy story breezes by with heart and verve. Well-researched depictions of historical events and immersive period details round out this stirring tribute to an unsung trailblazer. It’s a gripping tale of perseverance. Agent: Lucy Cleland, Kneerim & Williams.
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