Holly> One of the greatest beauties of a book in my opinion is that there's no passport needed to take you places you want to go or even knew existed.

Hi, I'm Holly Jackson, the host of Books by the River, and I'm here to navigate the conversations of those who draw the maps for some of the most interesting journeys bound in a book.

Today we're speaking to Tracy Enerson Wood, author of Katharine, The Wright Sister.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Major funding for Books by the River is brought to you by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

For more than 40 years, the ETV Endowment of South Carolina has been a partner of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio.

This program is supported by South Carolina Humanities, a not for profit organization inspiring, engaging, and enriching South Carolinians with programs on literature, history, culture, and heritage.

SC Humanities receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Democracy demands wisdom.

Additional funding for Books by the River is provided by Visit Beaufort, Port Royal and Sea Islands and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USC Beaufort.

Holly> And welcome to the show, Tracey.

Thanks so much for coming by.

We really appreciate having you here.

Tracy> Oh, thanks for having me.

It's a beautiful, beautiful place.

Holly> All right, well, let's get right to it.

Talking about these books, tell us about your latest one.

Tracey> So, coming out September 10th, is Katharine the Wright Sister, which is my fourth novel.

It's also like my previous novels, historical fiction, focusing about an amazing woman in American history that no one's ever heard of.

Holly> Why should we care about Katharine?

Of course, we've all heard about the Wright brothers so much growing up, but why does Katharine matter?

Tracey> Yeah, because that's exactly it, right?

We've all heard of the Wright brothers.

They invented the airplane and every schoolchild knows that story.

But what I like to find is those hidden stories, the women, mostly behind the scenes that have made incredible difference, that if not for them, for example, if not for Katharine, we wouldn't have the airplane when we did.

They would not have been able to invent it because it was Katharine behind the scenes, keeping the family going, working as a school teacher, helping them with kind of sticky situations when their heads were so much into the math and the physics of it.

She was more the big picture person saying, “Hey, well, what if you put the tail here?” kind of thing.

We don't know exactly how much of that she did because as with a lot of women's roles, it wasn't recorded.

But it is recorded in many, many of the boys, as she called them, their diary notes and their father's notes, how much of a help she was.

So she was the power behind them.

She was, you know, to hate to use an old song, but she was the wind beneath their wings.

Holly> Tell us about the research process of finding more out about Katharine and where you got to go explore and get some of those answers.

Tracey> Yeah.

well, my my son- in-law, actually came up with this name one day reading Facebook <laughs> and said, did you know this story?

And I just kind of just heard her name.

Like, um they were, of course, from Dayton Ohio where my husband's hometown was.

And as we were military, we traveled around everywhere.

But that was sort of our only home base.

So I have a very close relationship with Dayton, and so I'm like, huh, interested, right?

And then, aviation.

Aviation is huge in my family.

My brother was a naval aviator.

My father-in-law was a World War II naval air flight engineer.

My son went to ground school at age like 14, 15.

My now grandson is now in ground school at the age of 16.

Holly> Oh, wow!

Tracey> So it's aviation was huge in my family.

So that was, oh my gosh, and then I found out about Katharine's story and I just I just felt like I had to tell it.

Well, first, I tried to find what was out there already.

But it wasn't - and her, the story's told a little bit here and there.

There are actually a few biographical books, but no one had really written the novel where you could really get to know her and her family.

So that was my story and I did my research, basically where the story took place.

I went back to Dayton.

I went through many places in North Carolina.

I didn't get to go to Canada, which one scene was set in, but I will.

Holly> It's on the list, right?

Tracey> It's on the list.

I will get up there.

And of course, I went to one of the most important turning points in the story.

It happens in Fort Meyer, Virginia, and it was a very important testing ground there.

So I spent quite a bit of time there dragging my grandchildren with me because that's part of my research.

You know, I take them with me and they get to see and understand and learn these stories as I do.

So that makes it more exciting.

Holly> And you know, I bet it probably helps with the process of learning too, because they ask questions you might have not have thought.

and so that probably helps you gain a little more insight as well.

Tracey> Exactly.

Holly> What a great experience!

Tracey> It was.

I'm very blessed to be able to do this.

Holly> I love that.

All right.

So let's talk about just who you are as an author.

Let's back up a little bit because this is a pattern you follow of writing about these women.

Tell me just kind of describe yourself as an author and then about that process of finding those women.

Tracey> Well, I think becoming an author has been a lifelong journey.

You know, I started out as a as a registered nurse, worked there in many different places and for about 25 years.

And at the same time, I was a military wife and I was moving all over the place, a lot to the south, actually, and spent a lot of time here.

And all during that time, I was writing.

I would, for example, I like to write funny things.

I like to write funny short stories.

And I wrote just sort of a funny essay on army life, you know, kind of comparing it to, of all things, a poncho liner.

Which if you're army, you would know when I was talking about.

But it was just a funny story.

And I sent it into to some it was a national magazine, but an army focus magazine, and they loved it and they wanted me to write a monthly column.

Holly> Wow.

Tracey> Now here I go, just off of that one thing.

And I'm like, huh, okay.

I guess they really need somebody to write, so that just sort of started a different focus.

I started looking at things in my career in my family from sort of this bird's eye view of how would I write this?

How would I write this story?

How could I interest people in sometimes fairly ordinary things that are going on.

So also sort of my attraction for writing the women's role, sometimes, many times often in the background, But if it weren't for them, things wouldn't happen.

You know, someone's got to raise the children, you know?

Someone's got to keep the home coming - home, <laughs> Holly> Going, yeah!

Tracey> So it's a really important role and so overlooked and I felt I should honor that with my writing.

And also as I get to meet readers and share these stories and they share their stories with me.

It's it's completely magic.

Holly> All right, give us the rundown of the ones that you've published and in into Katharine's story, and tell us a little bit about those.

Tracey> Okay.

Well, I should start with actually the only nonfiction books, actually, I've written, which were co-authored.

But one of the important things that started me on this journey was putting together Homefront Cooking.

The full title is Homefront Cooking, Recipes, Wit and Wisdom from military families and military veterans and their families.

Because I started feeling about how many stories were being lost, you know, and where where did families tell their stories?

Or, you know, they were passed down stories at the dinner table.

So, I started collecting their stories and these families' recipes and I put it all together into that book and that just got me sort of going.

And then I wrote The Engineer's Wife because I'm sort of fascinated with bridges <laughs> and growing up, my father would take us to the top of everything We, you know, we lived about an hour outside of New York City, and we went to the top of everything, the Twin Towers, when they opened, the Statue of Liberty, you name it, we went to the top of it, climbed mountains.

We went over bridges.

So I had this sort of background And then I discovered the story of Emily Warren Roebling, who basically, if it weren't for her the Brooklyn Bridge would not have been finished.

It doesn't because things just sort of fell apart and she kept it together.

So it was fascinated with this story.

And I think you could say obsessed.

<laughs> Holly> Okay, so this kind of came through researching the bridge itself.

Tracey> Right!

Through the bridge and finding her story and her part of it.

And I'd never heard of her.

I never heard of her.

And yet, she is on a black plaque on the bridge, so that started me down that road.

But next, I thought, okay, I had to learn a lot of like head mind blowing engineering stuff <laughs> to write The Engineer's Wife, because you have to understand things if you're going to write it, even though I'm obviously not going to become an engineer.

But from my next book, I thought maybe I should stay a little closer to home to what I actually know about.

And I was a nurse.

So I decided I want to write a story about a real nurse in history, one that really changed things, but maybe we have never heard of.

So I wrote the story of Julia Stimson in The War Nurse, which is a World War I era book.

And it's very, very close to my heart.

Her story is absolutely amazing what she did.

So and and then I... Holly> Did you feel a special connection just because you had spent so many years in the same line of work?

Tracey> I did.

You know, anatomy doesn't change.

The human body doesn't change, emotions, Those all, even though this was over a hundred years ago, those things are still the same.

Many things about nursing are the same, the caring, the empathy.

And Julia was - was in the forefront of nursing, really one of the developers of nursing, which I didn't know.

She was pretty much the person who made it a profession.

And yet, we haven't heard of it.

So yeah, and and I felt I could bring something special to the story because I've been there.

I know what that feels like.

So, that was very, very special.

And then I thought, okay, we're going to go in a new direction altogether.

And I wrote The President's Wife which is the story of Edith Boling Wilson, the 2nd wife of Woodrow Wilson, very controversial president, controversial first lady, perhaps our most controversial first lady, as she's also sometimes known as our first woman president, as she took over after Woodrow had a stroke in 1919.

So I was fascinated by that and I knew a little bit about it.

I had heard that, yeah, he had a stroke and some people said that she was running things, but not really, you know, so I researched it.

And I found out, well, you know what?

It's true.

I mean, it's, you know, very well documented that she Holly> She ran the show.

Tracey> She ran the show and no one got in to see Woodrow for about 18 months.

Holly> Oh wow.

Tracey> It was just hidden from the public.

So again, I want to say she's a heroine, but my heroines aren't all perfect.

And I wanted to bring that to light too, even though I really admired her as a as a character and what she stood for.

But boy, there are some things that really would make you turn your head.

1920, of course, was the passage the 19th Amendment under Woodrow Wilson's administration.

Did you know that Edith was against suffrage?

Holly> Oh.

Oh, yeah, so things like that just kind of make for an interesting story.

How did that all come about?

So then I wrote that.

Holly> Then comes Katharine.

Tracey> And then comes Katharine, which, as I said before, I really had a lot of just personal ties to many parts of the story.

And I fell in love with the family, with the story, with their gumption, their bravery.

But there's one other thing that this story had that none of my other stories had.

And that was it was a sibling story.

All my other, you know, were a romance... little bit of a romance with with Julia or couples as in the Engineer's Wife and the President's Wife.

But this one's about siblings.

I have a whole mess of siblings.

And they're very, very dear to me and we're very close.

But the sibling relationship is a whole other world right?

from a romantic relationship.

And I really wanted to sort of dig into that.

And again, bring my perspective, you know, my own self into the story, knowing how things work between brothers and sisters, having a mess of all of them.

Holly> Right.

Tracey> So, that was sort of the final thing like, I have to write this story.

Holly> Yes, that's very interesting.

All right, so we have these four special women now who you've studied greatly.

If you could put them all together, are there personality traits that really stick out to you that is a common theme among them?

Tracey> Oh, yeah, for sure.

Each one of them in their own way was a strong leader and a strong follower, which, you know, that's a different dichotomy that everybody doesn't have.

But each one of them had a good brain and knew how to use it and learned how to use their influence in different ways.

Definitely different ways than, I hate to be stereotypical, but typically men would use.

They all had power and power and influence and learned to use it.

So I would say that's the biggest thing they have in common.

Holly> Were there frustrations by you along the way, of the research process, of the lack of record keeping when it came to their roles?

Tracey> That yeah, that's always an issue, but tell you a little secret.

Sometimes, that's a good thing when you're a historical fiction writer.

Holly> If you get to write it.

Tracey> Because if it's not known those are the parts you get to be inventive and imagine how it would happen.

You know that you went we went from here to here and uh but how did that decision come about?

Who was there in the room?

Where were they?

So it was fun to be able to do that.

because when you're writing historical fiction, at least my opinion is when the fact is known, when the history is known, you pretty much need to stay with that.

Holly> Sure.

Tracey> Readers expect that.

And occasionally you have to stray from that because it just doesn't fit in in the arc of a story and but then you own up to it.

I put author's notes and I own up to it when I had to, you know, slightly change a date or people's names and that kind of thing.

But it's a bit of a gift, and there isn't a lot written about Katharine, especially not by herself, but there are letters.

It's really a shame we don't write letters to each other anymore because personal letters, that's my go-to place.

That's where you, you know, you can read history books and you can read biographies, but you know where you find out how people really feel about things?

Read the letters.

Holly> Do you think about that sometimes, whenever you think about authors of the future and what are they gonna go off of?

Tracey> I know.

email... Holly> Are they pulling up text message files?

<laughs> Tracey> That's kind of scary.

Holly> Right.

Tracey> And there's also a problem with like the Internet, too much information.

In the President's Wife, there was volumes and volumes and volumes because he was the president of the United States.

So every kind of action is there.

And it's almost harder to find where's my story?

Where's the human interest?

Where is my plot in the midst of this this great, big mass of information?

But in the future, I do worry that our emotions will be lost.

The reasons why we made decisions will be lost.

They'll just know kind of what happened.

So that's why books are really, really important.

Holly> I know that this is the newest one and you're probably still taking a breath.

But do you have anything that you're working on or you think you're going to work on next?

Tracey> Only always working on the next thing, always.

But I'm going to move forward in history a little bit.

I have kind of slowly creeped up from the 1880s.

Katharine takes us through the roaring 20s to the end of the 20s.

I'd like to move up in time and I don't really want to write about the depression.

It's depressing.

<laughs> Holly> Right.

Tracey> There's already many, many beautiful books written about the World War II and before World War II time era, so I'm going to skip right over that.

I'm thinking of doing sort of a Madmen/The Right Stuff 50s, 60s from a woman's point of view.

<laughs> Holly> Okay.

I like it.

Tracey> I mean that's about, it's vague, but that's kind of where I'm going and I don't know yet.

I haven't quite picked my heroine, but several are talking to me, so.

Holly> Okay, yeah.

I really like these stories of how you find these characters and I mean, they vary so much.

I love that one started from your son's Facebook post that he noticed and then another one obsession over a bridge and this is really neat, but you said that they're speaking to you.

So these are stories that you've heard of certain women, and you're just thinking, is that the one I'm gonna...?

Tracey> And people write to me with suggestions.

Holly> With ideas, ok. Tracey> But many times it's like, yeah, it's a great story.

It hasn't been told, but what's really important to me is that I have a personal connection to the story.

I need to have something that just uniquely to me that I can tell this story in a special way.

I felt that way with the bridge because I grew up in that area.

I felt that way of course, with The War Nurse, being a nurse.

President's Wife, I don't know what I had there.

<laughs> ...other than spending a lot of time in Virginia.

So a lot of the people like, yes, interesting, and I do some research on them, but I have to have that spark I have to have “Why am I the person to write that story?” Holly> Yes.

And while thinking through this and you formerly being a nurse and having those...seeing the improvement from the patients, hearing them tell you that they're better because of some of the work that you did, I imagine there's that same similar satisfaction you get whenever you hear from these readers.

Tell me about that experience of just that reader feedback that you get, whether it be through a written letter perhaps, hopefully sometimes, or virtually or in person.

Tracey> That's amazing that you connected that with nursing because I never did before.

I just it just but it is kind of the same thing and actually the very favorite part of being an author is meeting readers talking to them, hearing from them, getting their feedback on the story, what the story meant to them.

And that is such a huge, huge reward.

And I guess, yeah, thanks for pointing that out.

<laughs> Holly> Well, it's just connecting to me because you... Tracey> Because in nursing, that's the best part of nursing.

It's like knowing that you matter, knowing that you made a difference for someone in their life, that you know, maybe you'll forget the book tomorrow, but whatever, but it meant something to them and they internalized it.

And actually, one of the reasons I went into to writing novels was in playwriting, believe it or not, I was writing plays before I started with novels, short stories and plays.

And, too long of a story to get into too much, but I wrote a play, sort of had to for a job I was doing.

It was scary.

I had never done it before and I had the entire army post come to it because it was part of a government program.

Holly> Oh goodness.

Tracey> And uh so I wrote this play and we did it and I was scared to death.

And I, you know, I did everything, directing I hired authors, uh actors.

and at the end of it, there was, we did it three times one day.

There was silence.

We had this theater with 800 soldiers, rowdy soldiers, young soldiers.

They - and it was - it was like a drug program.

Basically, we had it, you know, usually every year they had to have this drug program.

And there was just silence and I'm like, I am like, you know, I'm down of my chair.

I'm going to.

And then they stood up and then they applauded and applauded.

And it was the most amazing thing.

And then, you know, I stood at the door collecting their little programs and you know, because I think I was introduced as the playwright and they hugged me and... Holly> All of that work was worth it.

Tracey> It was.

And boy was I hooked.

That was when I was hooked.

I like, oh my gosh, you know, because I've written like little magazine articles and stuff.

But you never see those people or hear from them again.

But, I'm like, you know, my words are touching people, you know, and the actors, when the words came out of their mouths, it was not what was in my head.

And I realized that now as an author that what's in my head isn't necessarily what's in the reader's head.

Holly> What they're getting out of it, right?

Well, what do you hope that they get in terms of the inspiration of these behind the scenes, strong people who made these big things happen?

Tracey> Yeah, I well, I I kind of write it for people who are behind the scenes.

I mean, for the people who are, you know, who are the ones who are credited with everything.

So that they know and understand how important their role is, you know, whether you're “shlepping” the kids to school.

Well, you have the future of our country literally in your hands.

You know, all those roles are so important.

So I want to to highlight that, highlight the roles of women, especially, and that those secondary roles, those back in the background roles are critical, are the most important select.

You know, what I hope they take from it and bring to their own life.

And I hope that they are entertained.

I hope they learn something.

I hope they laugh a little bit.

I hope they cry a little bit.

Holly> That brings it all together.

All the emotions in a book.

It sounds perfect.

Thank you so much.

Our time is already wrapped up, unbelievable.

It happens so fast, but that's what happens when you're having fun.

So thank you so much.

learning more about Katharine, the Wright Sister by Tracey Enerson Wood, and we just were so happy that you were able to stop by the studio during this busy time in your world.

And thank you, everyone, for joining us here on Books by the River.

We do love having you around, and we hope you'll join us next time right here on Books by the River.

Tracey> This is in Katharine's point of view on the day of our first flight.

On the appointed day, I tried to ignore the queasiness in my belly as I rode out to the flying field in a horse and buggy.

For the better part of my life, I had been told of the wonders of flight and how aeroplanes were faster and could go places horses couldn't, but it never seemed like something I would need to do.

There wasn't anywhere I needed to go that a boat or a ship or a good old horse couldn't take me, but this was an important step, not only for me to get over my fear, but also for the boys to show that they could earn the trust of the fearful.

Will slung his long arm across my shoulders and spoke in a low, comforting voice.

"It's going to be grand.

You'll enjoy the ride once you're up there, peering down on all of this.

It will be noisy, but don't worry that just means all is working well.

Toward the end when we're on a glide path in, I'll shut down the engine, so don't be alarmed."

He stopped and faced me, looking straight in my eyes.

"Are you ready?"

I was not ready never would be, but was not about to embarrass my brother.

"I am let's go."

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Major funding for Books by the River is brought to you by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

For more than 40 years, the ETV Endowment of South Carolina has been a partner of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio.

This program is supported by South Carolina Humanities, a not for profit organization inspiring, engaging, and enriching South Carolinians with programs on literature, history, culture, and heritage.

SC Humanities receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Democracy demands wisdom.

Additional funding for Books by the River is provided by Visit Beaufort, Port Royal and Sea Islands and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USC Beaufort.

♪ ♪