Wash
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Salt Publishing
Published:18th May '26
Should be back in stock very soon
Wash is an ordinary man — who lived an extraordinary life. His story and struggle are inspiring, and they show how the odds can be overcome; that true love is possible, but it doesn't always come in the shape you expect. War, struggle, queer love, eroticism … and a monument for the ages. Wash has it all.
He is a boy growing up in rural Pennsylvania under the eye of a brutal, brilliant father. He is a young man at college, enduring the choices that have been made for him and finding brightness and beauty all the same. He is a soldier in a dreadful war who – despite that awful conflict – finds the extraordinary woman who was the love of his life, and her tale inextricably twines with his. He is an engineer who builds one of the great wonders of the modern world.
His name is Washington Roebling. His life holds the possible and the impossible, what could be grasped and what could only be longed for. History holds one truth. Here is another.
Forged in a brutal age, duty-bound to execute his domineering father’s vision of the life he must live, he joins forces with his brilliant wife Emily to overcome myriad obstacles to fulfilling his obligation, chief among them his own yearning to shed the burden of achieving a dream that was never his own.
This is a book of growth, yearning, about the price of achievement, about the road not taken. Beads on the necklace of a life are strung together to create a composite portrait not only of Washington but of those who loved him: Emily of course, but Max too – a young man whose spirit will haunt him for the rest of his life.
Here duty and desire, love and obligation, intersect and contradict each other. With subtle narrative and powerful, vivid prose it offers an invitation to enter a complex world, so that readers may see their own histories, their own choices, their own possibilities, mirrored in this compelling text.
Wash is a richly imagined and intimate book about a singular life – built from as many intricately linked elements as the iconic Brooklyn Bridge that is its hero’s lasting legacy.
Wagner’s immersion in the historical period is everywhere evident: in the confidence and economy of the dialogue, and in the attention to detail, from the fixtures of the bridge cables to the furnishings of a brothel. So too is her affection for this man.
-- Stephanie Merritt * The Observer *Closely observed, achingly felt, moment by moment, like still lives that aren’t still … Readers enter her fiction almost physically, as it is so solid and majestic, rather like the great bridge itself.
-- John Sedgwick * FT *Jumping back and forward through time, Wagner builds on these bald facts to create a vision of his life … a beautifully written illustration of the power of novels to tread where biographies cannot.
-- Antonia Senior * The Times *The Best New Fiction A famous American life is reimagined in this masterly historical novel. Washington Roebling is best known for building the Brooklyn Bridge, but first had to survive a traumatic childhood, under the thumb of a strict German father, then the horrors of the American Civil War. Wagner brings emotional insight to every chapter of his life. Her portrait of Wash’s wife Emily is particularly good.
-- Max Davidson * Mail on SundISBN: 9781784634018
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 21mm
Weight: unknown
288 pages