The Engineer's Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood

Selected for the September Gables Book Club, The Engineer'sWife is an historical novel based on the life of Emily Warren Roebiling, wife of the chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, Washington Roebling. She has been looked over by historians for her contribution to the construction of the bridge, a definite engineering feat.

The novel begins during the Civil War when Emily's brother introduces her to Washington and the two begin a long distance relationship until the end of the conflict. They seem madly in love and write, even if it is sporadically to each other. 

After their marriage in January, 1865 they, according to the book, moved to Cincinnati while Washington's father was working on the bridge across the Ohio to Covington, Kentucky. She showed her spunk by visiting the job site and taking food to the workers, but also learning about the bridge construction. 

They travel to Europe while Emily is pregnant in order to study the use of caissons in bridge construction. While there she delivers their only child, a son, John. Her delivery was complicated and resulted in the outcome of never being able to carry a baby again. The couple return to the United States and Washington, with his father, commence the building of the bridge. After a freak accident with a ferry, his father dies from a tetanus infection. Washington carries on the project until he developed decompression sickness, otherwise known as caisson disease. From that point on he became a virtual recluse. It was then that Emily took over the supervision of the bridge construction with a bit of Washington's guidance and a lot of studying from the books in his library. Her work came to fruition in 1883 when the bridge was dedicated. 

Throughout the book other characters are introduced, including some of Emily's family, the bridge workers and P.T. Barnum. It is this interaction that caused some consternation. In the afterword, Wood declares that relationship was fictional. Perhaps that statement should come in a foreword instead of the afterword. When an historical fiction author takes that much liberty, it becomes impossible to separate fact from fiction in other areas of the book. 

The  building of the bridge and Emily's role in it are documented and were the interesting parts of the book. Insights into the social and cultural styles of the times are also fascinating. Overall, I just wished the novel was less sensationalized and over-dramatized and I could have spent more time enjoying it rather than fact-checking.

Matrix by Lauren Groff

It is 1158 and Marie de France, seventeen and orphaned, arrives at an abbey where she has been sent to live. Matrix is the recounting of her life and that of the 12th century poet.  

She is a remarkable character and the reader marvels at the fact that she has been orphaned in France since the age of 12 and has managed her estate before being discovered. At that point she was sent to Westminister where she lived for 3 years. Believed to be the illegitimate half sister of King Henry II, she is totally enamored of Eleanor, the queen based on the real-life Eleanor of Aquitaine. She is sent to the abbey because she is most likely unmarriageable due to her largeness of frame and "no godly avocation."

Set in a remote part of the English countryside, the abbey is impoverished despite the large amount of land that it encompasses. Marie discovers this is because the tenants living on the abbey's land have not been paying rent. She makes an example of one family and after that the others fall in line. 

With Eleanor as a model of a powerful woman, the novel recounts how Marie brings order to the abbey and even the countryside. Having taken the veil, she uses her strong character and sense of right to lead the nuns as she works her way up the chains or command from subprioress to prioress to abbess. Groff begins most sections of the book with Marie's age so the reader knows how Marie is aging and becoming more powerful. 

Along the way new women come into the fold of the abbey and Marie's interaction with them and their stories add to the mature person into which Marie has developed and grown. Especially poignant is the tragedy of Avice de Chair, a novice who is sent to the abbey for having sex. She was or becomes pregnant and the description of her labor is heart-wrenching. 

Groff interweaves so many characters in and out of Marie's life and it serves to illustrate the power of a woman as well as one who is compassionate and ambitious at the same time. She makes improvements to the abbey and tends to those who are sick and troubled. The author does not shy away from descriptions and situations that may make a reader uneasy: the queer life in the abbey and the Christian tenet of women being inferior.

Matrix is a fascinating novel and demonstrates the command of prose that Groff possesses. Because of having COVID, I was not able to attend the Gables Book Club discussion of the book, but understood that I was probably the only one who liked it. It is worth a read to not only understand 12th  century life of women in a patriarchal society, but also to witness the development of a woman who can overcome life's strife with determination and ingenuity.