The Engineer's Wife

Summary

She built a monument for all time. Then she was lost in its shadow. Emily Warren Roebling refuses to live conventionallyshe knows who she is and what she wants, and shes determined to make change. But then her husband, Wash, asks the unthinkable: give up her dreams to make his possible. Emilys fight for womens suffrage is put on hold and her life transformed when Wash, the chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, is injured on the job. Untrained for the task, but under his guidance, she assumes his role, despite stern resistance and overwhelming obstacles. Lines blur as Washs vision becomes her own, and when he is unable to return to the job, Emily is consumed by it. But as the project takes shape under Emilys direction, she wonders whose legacy she is buildinghers, or her husbands. As the monument rises, Emilys marriage, principles, and identity threaten to collapse. When the bridge finally stands finished, will she recognize the woman who built it? Based on the true story of the Brooklyn Bridge, The Engineers Wife delivers an emotional portrait of a woman transformed by a project of unfathomable scale, which takes her into the bowels of the East River, suffragette riots, the halls of Manhattans elite, and the heady, freewheeling temptations of P. T. Barnum. Its the story of a husband and wife determined to build something that lastseven at the risk of losing each other