“Come gather ’round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon You’ll be drenched to the bone” Bob Dylan said it best. After the long slog of a punishing winter, this spring has been luxuriant for denizens of Alexandria and the greater DC area. It has been time to revel in the sunshine and to plan upcoming summer breaks. The times they are a-changing in the simplest of seasonal ways. In picking up a summer novel, you may want one that sweeps you up and only puts you back down at the end of a quick, satisfying read: a trip that takes you through an important piece of social history that influenced major changes in our country. Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings is just such a book. “There was a time in Africa the people could fly.” Hetty Handful Grimkė hears her mother, a slave named Charlotte, tell her stories handed down from Africa while they work for a prominent planter-class family at the turn of the nineteenth century in Charleston. Her mother implants seeds of future hope in her as she grows older. At the same time, she tries in vain to protect Handful when possible and acclimate her to the increased demands placed on an adult slave. Handful’s first turning point occurs when she “graduates” from doing random work. At the age of ten, the mistress of the house presents her to the eleven-year-old Grimkė daughter, Sarah, as a present, her own waiting maid. Sarah Grimkė, the other prominent character in this book, is an unusual, intelligent child. Traumatized at the age of four when she accidentally saw a slave whipping in the back yard, her voice comes and goes. At times she stutters and can…