The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

Sue Monk Kidd has not been a prolific author, but she has been a quality one.  I enjoyed her previous two books very much (especially The Secret Life of Bees) and this one is no exception.

The main character is Sarah, who is based on an actual person, Susan Grimke.  The basic template of the real life abolitionist is as follows.  She grew up on a large plantation in Charleston, South Carolina in a family with 14 children.  She was born in the middle, and while she had high aspirations, her father crushed them at an early age.   She took on the role of raising her youngest sister Angelina.  She converted to Quakerism and became an abolitionist first and then an advocate for women's suffrage.

Sarah's world in the book is a place where "owning people was as natural as breathing" and on her 11th birthday Sarah, the daughter of a wealthy family of a prominent slave owning judge, is given 10-year old slave-girl Handful as a gift, wrapped in lavender ribbons.   Her first act as a slave owner is to free her slave, which she then discovers is not within her right to do.  She has a time as a rebellious girl, teaching her slave to read and write, reading books freely and educating herself. He father is at first entertained by her, but then becomes quite angry that she is upsetting the social order--both for herself and her slave and he takes all her privileges away. She comforts herself helping to raise her youngest sister, Charlotte, and creates her in her own mold.  The rest of the book is her journey away from slavery, the reaction it engenders, her abandonment and subsequent reunion with Handful.  It chronicles in fiction a turbulent time in America's past, both with slavery and the lack of opportunities for women in general and Southern women in particular.