Finished: The Invention of Wings (Monk Kidd) Book Club Book #5. A very good book about the real life southern sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke who grew up in the early 1800's and became some of the first female abolitionists in the country. Growing up on a plantation in South Carolina, Sarah Grimke is "given" her own slave, a 10 year old girl named Handful, for her 11th birthday. Sarah immediately sneaks into her lawyer father's office that night and looks up the lingo for freeing a slave, and writes a letter freeing Handful! She finds the note torn in two and left outside her door the next morning. She assumes it is her rigid, extremely southern and set in her slaving ways, mother. Her father, though the typical patriarch and slave owner, has always let Sarah into his study to read his books, though he doesn't really take her aspirations to someday be a lawyer like him seriously. He saves those hopes for her brothers, and eventually scoffs at Sarah, dashing her hopes in front of everyone. :-( Anyway, it ends up being her father who has torn the note apart, so Sarah is forced to keep Handful as her slave. The story alternates between Sarah's viewpoint and Handful's. We hear the story of Handful's mother, Charlotte, also a slave on the plantation. Charlotte has a rich history and is an amazing seamstress. She has made a quilt  full of black triangles which represent the blackbirds from her own mother's Africa which represented the freedom to fly away. Charlotte also makes a "story" quilt, which has appliques on different squares showing her own history of being born and then put into slavery. Handful and Sarah spend so much time together that they become lifelong friends, and even though it is against the law, Sarah secretly teaches Handful how to read! When Sarah's father finds out, Handful is punished with a cruel lash and Sarah is punished by being forbidden any books whatsoever...her beloved books. They are all stripped from her room and she is banished from her father's study. As Sarah grows up, she is outspoken in her views and never embraces the typical southern belle behavior like her other sisters. She does end up with one suitor, who she falls for completely, but he ends up being a cad who was just trying to get into her skirts! Heartbroken, Sarah resolves that she'll never marry. When Sarah is 12 her mother has her last child, another little girl named Angelina. Sarah begs her mother to let her be her godmother. Her mother relents, and Sarah's anti-slavery viewpoint becomes prevalent in "Nina" as well. Meanwhile, Charlotte meets a free black man named Denmark Vesey who has "many wives". Charlotte becomes involved with him and becomes pregnant. Charlotte has saved money on the side from selling quilts that the "Missus" knows nothing about. She plans to someday buy her own and Handful's freedom. One day, though, with a pass into town to do the marketing, Charlotte doesn't return home. The Grimke's think she has run away, but she has actually being taken by a slave-trader. Handful mourns her mother's disappearance and even sneaks out and over to Denmark Vesey's to see if he knows anything, and he tells her the grim news that he thinks Charlotte has been taken and probably sold to another slave owner. Handful sees that Vesey has a secret list of many of the area slaves and plans a huge uprising! However, the authorities find out, and execute Denmark and his "lieutenants" by hanging, crushing the hopes of the slaves. There are so many cruelties that are shown against the slaves: the workhouse, where Handful's foot is crushed by a giant water wheel; the bridle like mouth contraption used as punishment; the tying of Charlotte's one leg by a belt to her neck as she's made to stand on the other leg for an hour; the horrible whippings; and, of course, the general degradation as they were treated as less important than the plantation animals. Sarah, unable to live on the plantation any more, leaves and goes north where she actually becomes a Quaker. The Quakers are anti-slavery, but they are also anti-women's authority, so Sarah is always butting heads against the elders as she'd like to speak out and become a minister. Nina, also less and less tolerant of her life, eventually joins Sarah in Pennsylvania and also converts to being a Quaker. The sisters become very involved in the abolitionist movement, even writing pamphlets. When their pamphlets are published, they are asked to tour the northeast speaking out to women about anti-slavery. Of course, they are shunned by their family, and even start rubbing their male associates the wrong way as the topics start to veer just as strongly towards women's rights as much as slave rights. Meanwhile, having run away from her current owner, Charlotte finally makes it home 14 years later, with Denmark's 13 year old daughter in tow. Handful is beside herself and embraces her now fragile mother. And, now she's got a sister...Sky. After Charlotte's passing, Handful is determined that she and Sky will run away and make it to the north where Sarah and Nina are...where there are free blacks. With Sarah's help in the end, Sarah, Handful and Sky all escape on a ship north, with Handful and Sky dressed in the mourning attire belonging to Missus and the little Missus (Sarah's sister Mary). A few years before Mr. Grimke had passed away, thus the mourning attire. And, that's where the book ends, but certainly not the history! The sisters were inspirational, as well as Charlotte, Handful, Sky and Denmark, but boy, it is just so hard to read about the horrors of slavery. I would have to say that Slavery and the Holocaust are the two most horrific blights on the humanity of mankind. And, the treatments and sexual mutilation of the women in Africa is worth being added to that list as well. :-( I hope we never forget, never.