Drawing Outside the Lines follows Julia, a young girl who has a natural bent and curiosity about architecture and drawing/art. In a time when options for girls/women were limited to marriageability and child bearing, young Julia wants more for herself, particularly after seeing the Brooklyn Bridge. Julia's passion is ignited, and we follow her through a journey of her girlhood, high school and college years as she perseveres through discrimination and prejudice to succeed in fulfilling her dreams.

Besides rooting for Julia to stay strong and focused (yet also balanced), it is rewarding and inspiring as an adult to see how singular adults who believed in her helped keep her on her path to becoming an architect. All of us have the ability to cheer on young people and encourage them in their dreams and ambitions.

I was surprised, in the best possible way, that Julia's Dad was so supportive of her all along.

This is a wonderful book for young and older folks alike. Well written and engaging!

Thank you to Netgalley and SparksPress for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This starts out as a charming book where you see the enthusiasm I a young girl captured by a technological breakthrough. You then see her use her talent to foster the ambition to fulfil her dream of becoming an architect. Then comes the important part. Through sheer courage and determination she fights the various forms of discrimination she faces as a woman to ensure she fulfils her ambition. In this way she should be a role model for many, male or female and this makes the book worth reading for a wide audience. The book reads like a personal narrative and keeps an energetic pace throughout although the material would fit a biographical genre as well. It was a pleasure to read

Aw I absolutely loved this book and the message behind it! The story follows Julia, an eleven year old girl who visits the new Brooklyn Bridge, which ignites an obsession in her that she could too build a structure as amazing as the Brooklyn Bridge. For a while, her mother tolerates her dreams, until Julia grows older and is told to focus on her needlework and other domestic duties. Yet, Julia excels in school and college despite the taunting and belittling from the male students and professors. Julia powers on and is determined to build the astounding structure she promised her eleven-year-old self.

Susan Austin is absolutely brilliant and the writing is just so beautiful. I loved reading the epilogue, as she explains what is fact and what is fiction, as the book is based on Julia Morgan, the first woman to receive an architecture license in the state of California. The story itself is so interesting and is beautifully written. It can be read to all ages, as the message is one of major importance. I absolutely recommend!

Thank you NetGalley and SparksPress for this free arc in exchange for my honest review.

In 1883, after a journey from Oakland, California to Brooklyn, New York on the Transcontinental Railroad, eleven-year-old Julia Morgan (known as Dudu to her family) got to walk on the newly completed Brooklyn Bridge. She was awestruck by that engineering marvel which was the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time.

Her mother tolerated Julia’s obsession with structures and construction techniques when she was a child, but as Julia grew into a young woman, her mother admonished her to concentrate on her needlework and dance lessons. How did Julia think math and drawing was going to help her find a husband?

Julia didn’t care about finding a husband. She wanted to go to college and study architecture, but in the 1890s, there were no women architects. Throughout high school and college, Julia managed to convince her parents to let her take math and engineering courses, even when she was often the only girl in class.

This fictionalized account of the Julia Morgan, the first woman to be granted an architect’s license in California, follows her life from that awe-inspiring visit to the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 until her college graduation in 1894. She faced constant adversity to reach her goal, sometimes from her well-meaning family who wanted a traditional life for her, and sometimes from men who were threatened by her intelligence.

Author Susan Austin did a fabulous job of world building. Details such as what clothes were worn, what food was eaten, and what games were played gave a sense of what life was really like in Oakland, California in the 1880s and 1890s. One of the funniest examples of tradition was when the college underclassmen knocked the top hats off of the Juniors' and Seniors’ heads. Having a battered “plug” as the hats were called, was a source of pride.

The fascinating “Epilogue” explains which parts of the story are fact and which are fiction and where Austin found her sources of information. Drawing Outside the Lines is a wonderful tribute to one of America’s woman trailblazers, the talented and hard-working architect, Julia Morgan.