The Wright Sister

In this tepid story, Dann (Starfish) gives voice to Katharine Wright, younger sister to the famous airplane inventors, Orville and Wilbur. In November 1926, the 52-year-old begins a “marriage diary” after she sets up house in Missouri with widower Harry Haskell, a journalist for the Kansas City Star. Her biggest dilemma as a newlywed concerns Orv, her emotionally dependent brother, who refuses to accept her marriage and ignores her letters and phone calls. In her diary, she recounts how she was 14 when her mother died, and her overbearing minister father instructed her to take care of him and her older brothers. Later, she supported her brothers’ tinkering and encouraged their visions of a flying machine so much that rumors circulated that she contributed much more to their invention than they acknowledged. In 1926, Katharine refused to give a Star reporter an interview about this, yet she confides the truth in her diary. While Katharine’s feelings for Harry are palpably real, her other emotions—about what else she wants from her new situation in Kansas City and why she’s desperate to make peace with a disagreeable sibling—remain murky. The seeds of a lovely story are here, but Dann fails to nurture them. Agent: Malaga Baldi, Malaga Baldi Literary Agency. (Aug.)