 |
Wilbur and Orville Wright, the youngest of the five-sibling unit, are best known as aviation pioneers. What may be unfamiliar to readers is the familial support that both equipped and shaped them to become great men. The most important members of the brothers' support team is their mother Susan, a learned woman with "a talent for fixing things," and their youngest sister Katherine, known later as "The First Woman of Flight." Combining their talents, Orville and Wilber start up a newspaper business and a bike shop before they design and fly The Wright Flyer 1—the world's first successful airplane in 1903. Little do they know that attempting to market their invention will be more trying than they could ever imagine.
Dempsey presents a human side in the retelling of the Wright story. Dempsey's purpose for concentrating on the human aspects of the famous brothers is the hope "that readers, young an old, might see the many possibilities in their own lives and set goals to make these a reality, as the Wright brothers did." While keeping to a chronological plot, Dempsey zeroes in on the brother's determination to persevere amid grueling circumstances and limited funds. Great examples include withholding their secrets while waiting for patents and pursuing the European and U.S. governments to market their invention. Dempsey's deliberate attempt to infuse the human element in her storyline puts a different spin on history. Dempsey closes with an apt quote from Orville: "I don't have any regrets about my part in the invention of the airplane, though no one could deplore more than I do the destruction it has caused..." With plenty of information on which readers can ruminate, A Tale of Two Brothers is a captivating mix of fact and emotion.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review