Hello, all! If you didn’t know, several weeks ago Harper Perennial sent me The Wright Sister by Patty Dann to read and review. I made an IGTV video review that you can listen to here, but I also wanted to write a review for my blog!
Book Title: The Wright Sister
Book Author: Patty Dann
Genre: Historical Fiction
Releasing August 2020
Book Blurb:
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 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.
This book was a fantastic historical fiction read. As someone who has always enjoyed learning, reading The Wright Sister was a perfect fit. The book is told in first-person from Katharine Wright’s perspective through letters and her “marriage diary” entries. Since the story is told in such a private and personal way, I was able to feel very connected to Katharine throughout the story.
Katharine’s diary entries and letters reveal bits and pieces of her life as she grew up among her many siblings (there were more than just Orville and Wilbur, as I came to discover!). Her diary entries especially reveal the Wright family secrets—just as hushed-up as others’ family secrets might be.
Katharine was a staunch feminist and, throughout her life, sought to support that cause. However, when she gets married, things change—suddenly she doesn’t have a close relationship to her brothers, and now she’s become a wife and stepmother at the age of fifty-two.
The Wright Sister tackles the subject of a woman in the early twentieth century learning her place in society through being a wife, stepmother, sister, and feminist. As Katharine discovers more about herself and can place her feelings about her disconnection with her brother, she grows as an individual. This story of intrigue, history, love, and self-discovery is a book any lover of historical fiction should read.
NOTE: This book does contain a fair amount of sexual content throughout. If you are not interested in reading this material, I would proceed with a bit of caution! However, I was able to skim the parts I wasn’t comfortable with and still enjoyed my read.