Friday Focus: Weekend Reads

 

 

 It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by My Head is Full of Books, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.
  

Today I'm featuring Katharine, the Wright Sister by Tracey Enerson Wood. The excerpts shared are from a hardcover edition borrowed from the library.

 

 

 

 

 

Book Beginning:  Wilbur

Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

September 1900

 

Wind. We chose a place where it abounded, in order to capture it and soar like the birds.

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Page 56: I missed my friends from Oberlin, the thrilling discussions of world events, of traveling and gossip and the latest fashions.

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My thoughts:  Katharine Wright played an integral part in the success of her brothers, Wilbur and Orville. She contributed important ideas that helped lead to the creation of their flying machine and their world-wide recognition. In addition to her practical ideas for perfecting the aircraft, she supported them behind the scenes—procuring materials and communicating on their behalf. Katharine was totally devoted to her brothers at great personal cost. She sacrificed her own desires and opportunities to make her brothers' dream of flight come true.

While the story includes an example of the age-old saying—behind every successful man there's a woman—I enjoyed a behind-the-scenes look at the dynamics of the Wright family and learning more about the historic events of their time.

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From Goodreads:  She helped her brothers soar… but was the flight worth the fall?

 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 sand 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 internationally 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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This Friday Focus: Weekend Reads post was originally composed and/or compiled and published by Catherine for the blog, bookclublibrarian.com. It cannot be republished without attribution.