ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND (SynergEbooks 2010) tells the improbable story of history’s first successful attempt to fly. According to Josiah Brantley, born a slave in Virginia, it wasn’t the Wright Brothers who did it.
In this fictional first person slave narrative, Josiah tells the story of Mose, an elderly slave and plantation mechanic who worked for twelve years in secret, deep in the woods under the cover of night, to build his crude ingenious flying machine.
Josiah reveals how one morning, he and two young friends, all children of slavery, mount the homemade flier and push off the mountaintop. Defying death and gravity, cruel overseers, vicious dogs and the lash, the children soar above the trees, over fields, roads and rivers to fly on the wings of the wind.
The novel has a contemporary frame. The opening and closing chapters are set in today’s world of computers, high-tech gadgetry and space travel. The story begins as young reporter Maria Rossi interviews the fourth African-American woman to fly in space. Fictional Astronaut Sharon Brantley offers the startling revelation that her distant ancestor escaped from slavery on a home-made flying machine. This intrigues the reporter and the quest to verify her history making claim is on.
The final chapters follow reporter Rossi in her search through history, digging through archives, documents, diaries and old newspapers to find primary source material supporting Josiah Brantley’s audacious claim. Experiencing frustrations historians commonly face, she learns that sorting out the facts, as one historian noted, is “like nailing jelly to the wall.”
In a unique hybrid of reality and invention, our fictional reporter interviews several of the most respected authorities in African-American history. Harvard’s Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Yale’s Dr. David Blight and Professor Jean Fagan Yellin of Pace University, appear as characters in the novel, talking about their own recent discoveries of long hidden 19th century manuscripts written by former slaves. In dialogue based on actual quotes taken from published sources, the esteemed professors leave open the tantalizing possibility that a manuscript written by Josiah Brantley may be discovered one day.
“So much of African American history is still buried in trunks, attics, basements and closets,” Dr. Gates says near the end of the novel, a statement that is authentic and annotated. “They keep finding Mayan cities and tombs of pharaohs. They’ve got to find more manuscripts from black people in the 19th century. I’m confident of it. It’s just the way it has to be.”
Blending fiction and history, science and fantasy, ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND is a whimsical, high-spirited adventure through the darkest corners of our American past, a celebration of ingenuity and perseverance, a triumph of the human spirit.
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Monday, May 17th 2010 at 3:01PM
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