Daughter of Invention Summary

Laura, the girls' mother, is always trying to invent something. For years she has shown them little drawings of things that she knows will make lots of money someday: timed-release water capsules for plants, a suitcase on wheels, and instant coffee with creamer already mixed in. The girls humor their mother but tell her that Americans don't need her ideas. They have already invented everything they could ever want.

She continues on, however, quietly sketching the ingenuity that springs to her at all times of the day or night. That is, until one night while reading The New York Times, she sees an ad for a suitcase on wheels. Their mother shrieks so loud that their father thinks he is back in the old country and the authorities have just broken in. That is the end of their mother's...