~ Hardcover
~ Winner of the Florida Book Award for General Fiction Gold - 2014
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. At the same time, 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 . . .
A masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world, The Invention of Wings is an exquisitely written novel and 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.
“A total revelation, The Invention of Wings is balanced by two extraordinary women: real-life abolitionist and feminist Sarah Grimké and the imagined handmaiden Handful, who nearly leaps off every page.” -- Essence