The Engineer's Wife by Tracey Emerson Wood

Emily Roebling's husband's desire to build bridges knows no limits and sadly, his greatest bridge design will also be his biggest challenge. The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge contained obstacles no one could predict and also paved the way for construction and engineering methods used today. In a show of force to protect her husband's reputation, Emily runs messages from his bedside, studies engineering and learns to stand up to what has been a man's world. Even her days of fighting for women's suffrage could not prepare her for what she would face in a male-dominated world of engineering, construction and government. Her relationship with P.T. Barnum is one that bolsters and threatens to tear down her reputation and the completion of the very project she gave up much of her life to see built. Well written historical fiction in the "woman behind the great man" style that we all love so much.