![]() ![]() ![]() By alternating chapters between the first-person voices of Sarah and Handful, we are plunged deep into both perspectives they share a visceral yearning and "torrential aches" for racial and gender equality. But for Sarah, it feels far from "natural" and she rails against the notion of slavery, teaching Handful to read and promising one day to free her – an eventuality that drives the plot as the years progress from 1803 to 1838. Inspired in part by the abolitionist and feminist Sarah Grimkë, Kidd explores the relationship between an urban slave in early-nineteenth-century Charleston and her young owner. This is a world in which "owning people was as natural as breathing" and on her 11th birthday Sarah, the daughter of a wealthy family, is given 10-year old slave-girl Handful as a gift, wrapped in lavender ribbons. Set – like her bestselling debut, The Secret Life of Bees – in the American deep south, where she grew up, The Invention of Wings unflinchingly depicts the brutality of slavery in vivid and meticulous detail, placing it in the tradition of novels such as Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison and first-person accounts such as Solomon Northup's 12 Years a Slave (now an Oscar-tipped film). T he struggle of 19th-century abolitionist and women's rights pioneer Sarah Grimké is at the heart of Sue Monk Kidd's powerful new historical novel. ![]()
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