The Invention of Wings: A Novel Paperback by Sue Monk Kidd

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The Invention of Wings: A Novel Paperback by Sue Monk Kidd

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Product Details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; Reprint edition (May 5 2015)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0143121707
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 9780143121701
  • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 272 g
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 1.78 x 12.7 x 19.56 cm

From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees and the forthcoming novel The Book of Longings, a novel about two unforgettable American women.

Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world.

Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.

Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.

As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements.

Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better.

This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved.



About Author

Sue Monk Kidd’s first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, spent more than one hundred weeks on the New York Times best seller list, has sold more than six million copies in the United States, and has been translated into thirty-six languages. It has been turned into an award-winning major motion picture and helped to shape high school curriculums around the country. Her second novel, The Mermaid Chair, a number one New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller, won the 2005 Quill Award for Best General Fiction. She is also the author of several acclaimed memoirs, including Traveling with Pomegranates, which she wrote with her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor, and the recipient of numerous awards, including a Poets and Writers Award.

Author Residence: Florida


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