"the story follows Hetty "Handful" Grimke, a Charleston slave, and Sarah, the daughter of the wealthy Grimke family. The novel begins on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership over Handful, who is to be her handmaid. "The Invention of Wings" follows the next thirty-five years of their lives. Inspired in part by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke (a feminist, suffragist and, importantly, an abolitionist), Kidd allows herself to go...

In 1974, after Julie's parents divorce, she moves to a new San Francisco neighborhood where the school does not have a girls' basketball team, so she fights for the right to play on the boys' team.

In an alternate world where women have no rights, two sisters face very different fates after an attempt to win the favor of the heir to the throne--one in the palace, the other on a volcanic prison island.

In the 1970s, Jillian draws strength and encouragement from her predecessors who fought for equal rights when she is told she does not belong in the all-boy Math Club.