Prompted by her mother’s yearnings, Hetty’s soul longs to fly free, and as the years go by, she becomes more determined than ever to achieve that freedom no matter the cost. It is from her mother that Hetty learns the story of the black bird’s wings, and the meaning of the triangular black symbols her mother sews into the quilts she makes. The girl is Hetty, otherwise known as ‘Handful’ and The Invention of Wings is as much her story as it is Sarah’s.
When, at the age of 11, Sarah is given a young slave girl as a gift, she defies convention by trying at first to refuse the gift, and then freeing the girl. The Invention of Wings is an historical novel with a basis in fact – the story of Sarah Grimke, daughter of a wealthy slave-owning Charleston lawyer and one of a large number of off-spring. When I discovered she had a new book out, I had to read it. Sue Monk Kidd has written two magical novels which remain among my favourites – The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair. Follow Sue on Twitter & Instagram and Facebook Kidd lives in North Carolina with her husband. Her latest novel, The Book of Longings, is to be published on April 21, 2020. She is also the author of several acclaimed memoirs, including The Dance of the Dissident Daughter and New York Times bestseller Traveling with Pomegranates, written with her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor. Wings has been translated to 20+ languages. It was selected for Oprah Winfrey's Bookclub 2.0 and other awards. The Invention of Wings, her third novel, was published in 2014 to wide critical acclaim and debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list where it remained for 9 months. The novel won the Nation Quill Award and was made into the television movie. The Mermaid Chair spent 24 weeks on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list, reaching the #1 position, and spent 22 weeks on the New York Times trade paperback list.
The novel was adapted into a award-winning movie and an Off-Broadway musical. Bees was named the Book Sense Paperback Book of the Year in 2004, long-listed for the 2002 Orange Prize in England, and won numerous awards. It has been translated into 36 languages and sold more than 6 million copies in the U.S. When her first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, was published by Viking in 2002, it became a genuine literary phenomenon, spending more than 2½ years on the New York Times bestseller list.
In her forties, Kidd turned her attention to writing fiction, winning the South Carolina Fellowship in Literature and the 1996 Poets & Writers Exchange Program in Fiction. She graduated from Texas Christian University in 1970 and later took creative writing courses at Emory University, as well as studying at Sewanee, Bread Loaf, and other writers’ conferences. SUE MONK KIDD was raised in the small town of Sylvester, Georgia.
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