A triumphant story about the quest for freedom and empowerment, Sue Monk Kidd"s third novel presents the remarkable journeys of two unforgettable women: Hetty "Handful" Grimke, an urban slave in early-nineteenth-century Charleston, and Sarah, the Grimke"s idealistic daughter. Inspired in part by the historic figure of abolitionist and suffragette Sarah Grimke, Kidd"s novel is set in motion on Sarah"s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten-year-old Handful. The Invention of Wings follows these two women over the next thirty-five years as they shape each other"s destinies and form a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement, and the uneasy ways oftove.