An epistolary novel of historical fiction that imagines the life of Katharine Wright and her relationship with her famous brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright.On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the world’s first airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, establishing the Wright Brothers as world-renowned pioneers of flight. Known to far fewer people was their whip-smart and … fewer people was their whip-smart and well-educated sister Katharine, a suffragette and early feminist.
After Wilbur passed away, Katharine lived with and took care of her increasingly reclusive brother Orville, who often turned to his more confident and supportive sister to help him through fame and fortune. But when Katharine became engaged to their mutual friend, Harry Haskell, Orville felt abandoned and betrayed. He smashed a pitcher of flowers against a wall and refused to attend the wedding or speak to Katharine or Harry. As the years went on, the siblings grew further and further apart.
In The Wright Sister, Patty Dann wonderfully imagines the blossoming of Katharine, revealed in her “Marriage Diary”—in which she emerges as a frank, vibrant, intellectually and socially engaged, sexually active woman coming into her own—and her one-sided correspondence with her estranged brother as she hopes to repair their fractured relationship. Even though she pictures “Orv” throwing her letters away, Katharine cannot contain her joie de vivre, her love of married life, her strong advocacy of the suffragette cause, or her abiding affection for her stubborn sibling as she fondly recalls their shared life.
An inspiring and poignant chronicle of feminism, family, and forgiveness, The Wright Sister is an unforgettable portrait of a woman, a sister of inventors, who found a way to reinvent herself.
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I never knew that the Wright Brothers had a sister and that Orville didn’t speak to her after she married. It was a great inside to the first family of flight.
I really enjoyed the book but did not like the ending. I wanted a happy ending!!
Seems just a reading of a journal and letters. Some of the things she sends in letters to her brothers seems in appropriate and the tone often reads as whining. Not really I learned much about the dribble that is included in the book. I feel it could have been much better and presented where the items connect with a historic perspective.
A diary style account of the Wright sister that we never knew existed. A must read for fans of women and 20th century history.
There are too many instances of a smart, intelligent woman being lost to history because the men in her life refused to give her credit where credit was due. Just such a woman is Katherine Wright, sister to Wilbur and Orville Wright. Her contributions to the famous flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903 were all but untold. Patty Dann, using fictional diary entries and letters, tells the story of an extraordinary woman whose brother stopped speaking to her because she had the gall to get married instead of spending the rest of her life taking care of him as she had for the first 52 years of her life. In Dann’s book, Katherine writes to Orville about her new life, etc., but never hears back from her brother. She also keeps a diary where she tells of her new life as a second wife to a family friend Harry Haskell.
This is a fast, easy read. Dann keeps us on track with her chapter headings telling where and when the chapter is set. The author brings Katherine to life as she adjusts to life in the unfamiliar society of Kansas City and pursues her interests.
If you love historical novels set in the early years of the twentieth century, this book needs to be at the top of your to-be-read list.
My thanks to Harper and Edelweiss for an eARC.
Katharine Wright, Orville and Wilbur’s younger sister, is a character who leaps off the page, right into your heart: smart, droll, giving, inventive, devoted, charming and happily marrying for the first time past 50. Patty Dann does a splendid job of bringing her to life through imagined letters to her brother as well as a diary that shares her earthier side. Even readers who don’t typically pounce on historical novels will like this book.
This novel is about the Wright brother’s sister, Katharine, with an A! It is written through letters that Katharine wrote to Orville in her older years, and also as entires in her own marriage diary. It is an interesting read, going between the two. It reminds me a bit like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society how it was written from the view point of letters. It makes for very easy reading!
As Katharine writes letters to Orville, she is reminiscing about their childhood, as well as how they eventually go to wear they did with flying at Kitty Hawk. As she writes the entries in her marriage diary, she is writing mostly about her life currently, having finally married after half a century and trying to make a new life away from Orv and being used to running a household full of males.
I learned a lot about the Wright family, I did not know a lot to begin with but there was a lot to learn about Orville, and essentially Katharine seemed to be some of the brains behind it all as well. She seemed to be a little resentful of having gone through life being referred to as the Wright Brother’s sister, which in a way, I kind of don’t blame her considering her contribution.
I thought it was a very interesting read, and I liked the style of writing. Although sometime I had to look at the font to see if she was writing to her brother or in her marriage diary. Thank you to the author, and Harper Perennial for the ARC! I really enjoyed learning about this family and how they contributed to history and the airplane that none of give a second thought to anymore.