The invention of wings by Sue Monk Kidd

As a status update on this I used enthralling, absorbing, fascinating, inspirational.

It got better.

This is an imagining of a real life. So it’s a complicated, complex and important novel. A weaving of fact and fiction, my disappointments are in which parts are made up. No spoilers here though, you’ll have to read for yourself.

There are horrors in the casual brutality meted out to slaves who are seen as belongings, not humans. But triumphs in the battle to change hearts and minds, led by the most unlikely of campaigners, sisters Sarah and Nina Grimke.

Sue Monk Kidd has got inside their lives, read their writings and leant them her imagination to bring their stories to life. It is a book to cherish, to read over, to tease every last morsel from. There are disappointments, but that’s the way of reality, things just don’t arrange themselves neatly with all loose ends tied in.

I loved this. I devoured it. I really didn’t want it to end. Read it.