She helped her brothers soar... but was the flight worth the fall?
It all started with two boys and a bicycle shop. Wilbur and Orville Wright, both unsuited to college and disinclined
to leave home, jumped on the popular new fad of bicycle riding and opened a shop in Dayton, Ohio. Repairing
and selling soon led to tinkering and building as the brothers offered improved models to their eager customers.
Amid their success, a new dream began to take shape. Engineers across the world were puzzling over how
to build a powered flying machineand Wilbur and Orville wanted in on the challenge. But their younger sister,
Katharine, knew they couldn't do it without her. The three siblings made a pact: the three of them would solve
the problem of human flight.
As her brothers obsessed over blueprints and risked life and limb testing new models on the sand beaches
of North Carolina, Katharine became the mastermind behind the scenes of their inventions. She sourced
materials, managed communications, and kept Wilbur and Orville focused on their goaleven when it seemed
hopeless. And in 1903, the Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight of humankind.
What followed was the kind of fame and fortune the Wrights had never imagined. The siblings traveled the world
to demonstrate their invention, trained other pilots, and built new machines that could fly higher and farther.
But at the height of their success, tragedy wrenched the Wright family apart... and forced Katharine to make
an impossible choice that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
From internationally bestselling author Tracey Enerson Wood, Katharine, the Wright Sister is an unforgettable
novel that shines a spotlight on one of the most important and overlooked women in history, and the sacrifices
she made so that others might fly.
