The Invention of Wings – Sue Monk Kidd (2014)

Sue Monk Kidd’s latest novel is a biographical/historical fiction based on the life of Sarah Grimke in Charleston, South Carolina, who, on her 11th birthday, was given Hetty (otherwise known as Handful), a 10-year-old plantation slave, to be her own handmaiden. Sarah doesn’t want to own another human being and tries unsuccessfully to give Hetty back to her parents or to free her. Neither solution is possible, and their two lives become intertwined as they both try their wings to freedom, Sarah from the patriarchal, rigid Southern slave-holding society, and Handful from her restrictions as a slave. Told in alternating chapters, the first-person narratives of Sarah and Handful provide stunning revelations of life in the early to mid-19th century in the South. Kidd masterfully interweaves the stores of an abolitionist and early feminist and a fictional slave with true historical figures and events. Available as a hardback book, large print, on CD, audiobook, and ebook in the Castro Valley Library.

Reviewed by Carol Lyke