ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND: THE UNTOLD STORY OF HISTORY’S FIRST FLIGHT. This historical fiction by Richard Kigel (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.
I began writing ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND in 1994. The idea for the novel came as I was driving my friend and teaching colleague to her home in Brooklyn. She asked me what I was writing about—and the whole story came unspooled. She listened patiently as I blathered on and told me what a great idea it was.
Then came the hard part. I had to actually write it. But before I could put a single word on paper I had to do the research—space travel and black history.
My thinking goes like this: Black History is not only for black folks. It is the history of our country—American History. It is the story of the challenges we faced and our efforts to overcome them. And that “we” includes white folks and black folks who worked together for the cause of freedom. Black history is history for all of us. It is a grand and glorious story. W. E. B. Dubois described it as “the most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history.”
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Thursday, February 9th 2012 at 5:15PM
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