The Engineer's Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood

Emily Warren was always a strong willed child but now as a young woman she knows what she wants and that's to be involved with the women's suffragette movement.  But when she meets Washington Roebling the two fall quickly in love and marry once Washington comes back from the war.   Washington is an engineer as is his bridge building father and the two have plans to build an iconic bridge to span the river between Manhattan and Brooklyn.  Though Wash has always supported Emily with what she wanted to do, now Emily is talked into using her wealthy mother's connections to give fund raising speeches for the project.  She reluctantly agrees as she is terrified of speaking in front of people.  It is at one of these meetings where she meets the infamous PT Barnum and an unlikely lifetime friendship and attraction is formed as PT trains her to get over her fear of being in front of people.  As the project moves into the building phase it is met with many hazards and roadblocks.  When Washington's father becomes gravely injured and eventually dies, Washington is now totally in charge of the project.  But his PTSD and his own battles with caisson disease from spending too much time in the shafts causes him to request of Emily to give up her own dreams to further his.  As more and more responsibility shifts to Emily and she becomes consumed with building the bridge she must find a courage within her she never knew she had all while facing her own demons from the past and the present.   Her marriage, her ideals, her dreams and principles and who she really is are all put on the line.

This historical fiction novel is based on the life of the real Emily Warren Roebling.  It explores how one woman took on a man's world to build a project of unimaginable scale, one that would change everything for a city and a country.  It is a story of love and self-sacrifice, of challenging the norms of the day in more ways than one.  The obstacles she faced seemed insurmountable.  She had no education and learned everything as she went.  She had a fear of being in front of people and overcame that to speak to crowds.  She had to earn the respect of the both the men in power and the ones who were doing all the hard labor in an era when women were scorned and shamed for pursuing anything but social status and were even dictated by men and their laws what she could and couldn't wear.  She had to make decisions when her husband could not be reached that she could only pray were the right ones.  And when her husband slowly pulls away both from the project itself but also from her she forged ahead to build the dream and the legacy.  I liked the story of this strong woman who changed things for the woman of her day.  Little is known about her and her contributions to the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and history even though there is actually a plaque on the bridge with her name on it.  I found the actual engineering science within the story a bit on the dry side as I do not in the least have a brain geared to the science of physics but I think the author did her best to make it as simply understood as possible.  But I must admit a lot of it was lost on me and I had to google things a few times.  The story was interesting and emotional.  The author's notes at the end are definitely a must read as she tells her inspiration for the story and also what was fact and what fictional parts she took liberties with.  I would have rated the book higher had it not been for one of these liberties and that was the relationship Emily had with a main character in the story.  It is revealed in the author's notes that because they lived in the same place at the same time the author supposed the relationship between them, that there is actually no historical fact to base the relationship on.  It was such an integral part of the story that this came as a shock to me and it kind of left me having to rethink the story without this part.  But other than that it was a great story of a woman who built an iconic bridge and who did not get the historical recognition due to her and well worth the read for the historical significance of her life.   

I gave it a 9/10