Spotlight + Giveaway: The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

Sue Monk Kidd’s #1 New York Times bestseller THE INVENTION OF WINGS

[Penguin; on-sale: May 5, 2015; $17.00; 978-0-143-12170-1]

now available in paperback 

A magnificent novel about two unforgettable American women. Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world.

Hetty “Handful” Grimké, an urban slave in early nineteenth-century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimké household. The Grimké’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.

Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday in 1803, when she is given ownership of ten-year-old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty-five years, as both strive for lives of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.

As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements.

Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimké, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better.

This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved.

   About the author

Sue Monk Kidd is the award-winning and bestselling author of the novels The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair. The Secret Life of Bees spent more than 175 weeks on the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list, has sold more than 6 million copies in the U.S., was turned into an award-winning major motion picture, and has been translated into 36 languages. 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. Debuting at #1, The Invention of Wings spent more than 25 weeks on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list. Kidd is also the author of several acclaimed memoirs, including the New York Times bestseller Traveling with Pomegranates, written with her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor. Kidd lives in Florida with her husband.

Please visit suemonkkidd.com

Follow Sue on Twitter @SueMonkKidd and Facebook 

Also available as an e-book and audio (Penguin Audio)

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**GIVEAWAY**

Click HERE to win a paperback copy of The Invention of Wings

U.S. Only