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10/05/2016 09:15 AMMost people are familiar with the Wright brothers and their successful first flight in 1903, but few are familiar with the woman who stood by their side through all of their successes and struggles—their sister, Katharine Wright. A successful woman in her own right, Wright soars to life in a new book by Guilford resident Harry Haskell.
In his new book Maiden Flight, Haskell explores the complexities of Katharine Wright: her life, her passions, and her ultimate decision to leave her famous and possessive brother Orville in 1926 to marry newspaper editor Harry Haskell, the author’s grandfather.
While Haskell never met Wright, who would have been his step–grandmother, he said she was a fixture in his family’s history that he wanted to explore.
“This extraordinary woman whom I have the good fortune of being related to is somebody who has been a presence in the Haskell family ever since I could remember, but always just a very shadowy presence in the background,” he said.
The inspiration for the book came to Haskell when he began reading an extensive collection of love letters Wright sent to his grandfather.
“I came up with this idea of an interwoven memoir early on, but it took me years,” he said. “I kept chipping away at it, but I decided pretty early on that this was going to be Katharine’s book.”
According to Haskell, Wright and his grandfather met at Oberlin College in the late 1890s. While they went their separate ways for a time—Wright back to her brothers and his grandfather went on to marry his first wife and run a newspaper—they continued to correspond via letters for years.
“At the height of their correspondence, she would be writing to grandfather two or three times a day,” he said. “It is as if she had a direct line between heart, her fingers, and her brain—it flows out in the most remarkable way and it makes these documents some of the most remarkable documents I have ever read.”
In reading the letters, Haskell said he came to better understand Katharine and the sacrifices she made. Having never married, she had been deeply devoted to the care of her two famous brothers for most of her life. It wasn’t until her early 50s that she left her surviving brother, Orville Wright, to marry Haskell’s grandfather—a move that permanently damaged her relationship with her brother.
“Her choice was: Is it your duty to Orville or is it your love for Harry?” Haskell said. “We know what she eventually decided and the price that she paid for it. I will never know in my own mind whether she thought it was worth it.”
In trying to tell the story of Katharine Wright and his grandfather, Haskell said he wanted to let Wright do most of the talking. A majority of the novel is composed of Wright’s letters.
“In this book when I looked at the letters and the story they tell I thought, ‘How do you bring this to life in a way that is emotionally true and that gets at some of the conflicting emotions and impressions that these people had?’” he said. “I eventually decided that a conventional, straightforward account, in my mind, couldn’t capture the feeling of lived experience here. I have assembled her words and I have connected them in some cases with some connective passages, but I have tried to let her tell the story as it unfolded in her own words.”
By letting Wright tell her own story in many ways, Haskell said he hopes readers hear Wright’s voice, but can also connect with her in some ways.
“There is certainly a strong personal aspect to this exploration, but the more I talk about Katharine and the more I talk to other people and try to see her as others may come to see her through this book, I see her as a very universal kind of figure,” he said. “Not an everywoman, but her experience and her worldview, the conflicting expectations that were placed on her, are very much what people continue to experience, particularly women I think.”
Haskell will be promoting his new book at a talk at the Guilford Free Library on Wednesday, Oct. 12 at 7 p.m. and at R.J Julia’s in Madison on Thursday, Oct. 13 at 7 p.m. To learn more about the author, visit www.harryhaskell.com.