The Engineer's Wife

This evening, my Books & Beer Club will be discussing The Engineer's Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood whether I am there or not! Hoping that I am there to participate. I was very interested in reading this book once I saw that this was their selection. I'm a sucker for books about Brooklyn. About the Brooklyn Bridge? Even better!

I love the Brooklyn Bridge. I grew up riding across it, looking at it from afar. I made up stories in my head about the bricked-in arches on the approaches to the bridge. I read and love David McCullough's The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge. I went to the fireworks celebrating the bridge's centennial in May 1983, not realizing there was a similar celebration 100 years earlier for the opening of the bridge.

At dusk, the bridge was cleared, and a stunning fireworks display exploded from the towers, the center of the bridge, and from boats on the river. The colorful extravaganza could be seen for miles across the newly united cities.

Surprisingly, I didn't walk across the Brooklyn Bridge until the summer of 2008, but I've since walked across it several more times. While reading this novel, I wanted to zip myself up to New York and walk across the bridge once more.

Possibly the last walk across the bridge,
in the rain, June 2015

First walk across the bridge,
August 2008

   

 

I wish I could remember more about what I learned in the David McCullough book. I knew that Roebling had gone to RPI, the same institute of higher learning that my husband at the time had attended. And I thought I knew that Roebling died before the opening of the bridge and that's why his wife had to take over. Not sure where that thought came from!

The Engineer's Wife is the story of Emily Warrens Roebling, wife of Washington Roebling, son of John Roebling, the inspiration behind the idea of a bridge spanning the East River to connect New York (city) and Brooklyn, then its own city. John dies before ground was broken for the bridge and Washington takes over. Wash suffers from caisson's disease, also called decompression sickness which happens when a person comes from below the surface of the water to above too quickly from his many trips down to the support of the Brooklyn side of the bridge. 

Emily was never your average late 19th century woman. She walked to the beat of her own drummer and strongly believed that women were capable and equal to men. When Wash gets too sick to go to the job site regularly (or at all), Emily first becomes his messenger and then his de facto representative. She studies engineering on her own, running the business side and learns to make engineering decisions on her own or with the input from others on the job.

Besides being at Emily "on the job," it's also about the emotional aspects of being a woman in the second half of the 19th century. She's got excellent role models in her mother and her mother's friends. Her marriage is untraditional and has many challenges of its own.

Some of the book got a little too technical for  me but those parts really were important to the telling of Emily's story. There were some Civil War references that I found interesting. I didn't love how the author would jump ahead quickly with no real transitions and at times her writing was a bit too cumbersome for me. But she captured the essence of the time and the place. Plus this was an easy book to sail through.

Reading this also made me think about Harriet and Isabella, an historical fiction novel about Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe. He was mentioned in passing in this book a couple of times.

More photos... just because.