The Gilded Age Book Club: The Engineer's Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood

The Gilded Age Book Club: The Engineer's Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood

Join Gilded Age fans across the country to discuss the story of Emily Roebling the true architect of the Brooklyn Bridge.

By Margaret Reardon

Date and time

Wednesday, May 8 · 4 - 5:30pm PDT

Location

Online

About this event

  • 1 hour 30 minutes

She built the Brooklyn Bridge, so why don't you know her name?

Emily Roebling built a monument for all time. Then she was lost in its shadow. Discover the fascinating woman who helped design and construct the Brooklyn Bridge. Perfect for book clubs and fans of Marie Benedict.

Emily refuses to live conventionally—she knows who she is and what she wants, and she's determined to make change. But then her husband asks the unthinkable: give up her dreams to make his possible.

Emily's fight for women's suffrage is put on hold, and her life transformed when her husband Washington Roebling, the Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, is injured on the job. Untrained for the task, but under his guidance, she assumes his role, despite stern resistance and overwhelming obstacles. But as the project takes shape under Emily's direction, she wonders whose legacy she is building—hers, or her husband's. As the monument rises, Emily's marriage, principles, and identity threaten to collapse. When the bridge finally stands finished, will she recognize the woman who built it?

Based on the true story of an American icon, The Engineer's Wife delivers an emotional portrait of a woman transformed by a project of unfathomable scale, which takes her into the bowels of the East River, suffragette riots, the halls of Manhattan's elite, and the heady, freewheeling temptations of P.T. Barnum. The biography of a husband and wife determined to build something that lasts—even at the risk of losing each other.

"Historical fiction at its finest."—Andrea Bobotis, author of The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt


Amazon blurb

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