dayton (ohio)

Examines the Great Dayton (Ohio) Flood of 1913 from the perspective of those who lived it, and whose heroism enabled the city to survive.

"Katharine Wright embodied the worldly, independent, and self-fulfilled New Woman of the early twentieth century, yet she remained in many ways a Victorian. Torn between duty and love, she agonized for months before making a devastating break with her world-famous and intensely possessive older brother Orville to marry newspaper editor Harry Haskell, the man she loved. Written by the grandson of Harry Haskell, Maiden Flight is imaginatively reconstructed from personal letters, newspaper reports, and other documents of the period--in particular, Katharine's lively and extraordinarily revealing love letters to Harry. Above all, the book celebrates Katharine's abundant store of what she called "human nature"--her lively and perceptive outlook on life, her great capacity for both love and indignation, and her acute and sometimes crippling self-awareness"--.

Dr. Gustav Uyterhoeven leaves Dayton, Ohio, in the late nineteenth-century to serve as a physician in the Boer War, and sends home twelve letters to his wife which chronicle his spiritual conversion, disguised as tales of his explorations of the imaginary island of Antipodes.