Wash by Erica Wagner review – vivid portrait of a monumental American

The life of the Brooklyn Bridge’s chief engineer inspires this multifaceted novel Washington Augustus Roebling, or “Wash”, was the chief engineer on the Brooklyn Bridge, which, when opened to the public on 24 May 1883, was the longest suspension bridge in the world. It was quite an achievement, but he didn’t do it alone. On the one hand there was his father, the austere and tyrannical John Roebling, who had designed and begun the bridge before his untimely death in 1869. On the other there wa...

By Christopher Shrimpton