Conditions are Favorable: a novel

Fall into the year 1900 at Kitty Hawk, NC, when life consists of shipwrecks, shoot-outs…and flying machines. When Orville and Wilbur Wright arrive to conduct flight experiments, their posh dignity stands in stark contrast to a community of rough old salts who believe in a “good God, a bad devil, a hot hell, and more than anything else, that the same good God did not intend for man to ever fly.” The Wright brothers may be able to defy divine edicts, theorize about relative velocities and engineer the world’s first flying machine. But when it comes to women, they are terribly love-shy. When Kitty Hawker Madeleine Tate meets these two odd bicycle mechanics from Ohio, she is struck by the brothers’ intellect, dandy appearance—and their grip on bachelorhood. Their shyness and fixation on flight puzzles her, too, but she finds her growing fondness for Orville hard to resist. He represents a splendid taste of the Outside World, the place where she can escape the poverty and fear that define life on a stormy sandbar. And Orville is flattered by her affections, but he has long-accepted the fact that he and Wilbur are social misfits who let one bad experience with courtship harden their hearts forever. He finds his shyness, obsessions and memories tough enough to overcome. But when Wilbur sabotages Madeleine’s every move to connect with him, Orville realizes he must ultimately make a choice between bonding with the woman who loves him, or with a machine that can take him into the sky.