Joe Strong and his wings of steel : or, A young acrobat in the clouds by Barnum
"Joe Strong and his wings of steel" by Vance Barnum is a juvenile adventure novel written in the early 20th century. It follows Joe Strong, a fearless circus acrobat and inventive showman, as he attempts to perfect mechanical, bat-like wings while still thrilling crowds with high-wire motor-cycle rides and underwater feats. Money troubles from a contested English inheritance and frictions under the big top test his resolve as he pursues the dream
of real flight. The opening of the novel introduces Joe’s new flying device at a circus-apparatus factory, where he explains its electric motors and steel wings to his friends Bill (a clown) and Benny (the “human fish”), even as a letter from England warns that his inheritance may be lost. A first unmanned trial shows weak lift and a blown fuse, prompting costly redesigns; meanwhile Joe returns to the circus, bolsters the show by disguising himself as a “rube” who topples into Benny’s tank, and restores his high-wire motor-cycle act to draw crowds. The arrival of Miss Tyndall and her “happy family” of animals sparks a brief misunderstanding with Helen Morton after Joe rushes Miss Tyndall’s choking dog to a veterinarian on his motor-cycle, but the pair reconcile. A note from the engineer rebuilding the wings brings Joe back to the factory for tests: the craft lifts strongly, Joe takes a successful first flight, then a rudder control slips, forcing a fast descent toward the roof; he diverts to a creek, splashes down safely, and the team finds and fixes the fault as he prepares to try again. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read or download for free
For an overview of the different reading options, see our Reading Guide
| Reading Options | Url | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read now! | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78067.html.images | 328 kB | |||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78067.epub3.images | 1.1 MB | |||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78067.epub.images | 1.1 MB | |||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78067.epub.noimages | 318 kB | |||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78067.kf8.images | 1.6 MB | |||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78067.kindle.images | 1.6 MB | |||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78067.txt.utf-8 | 285 kB | |||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/78067/pg78067-h.zip | 997 kB | |||
| There may be more files related to this item. | |||||
Similar Books
About this eBook
| Author | Barnum, Vance |
|---|---|
| Title | Joe Strong and his wings of steel : or, A young acrobat in the clouds |
| Original Publication | New York: Hearst's International Library Co, 1916. |
| Credits | Aaron Adrignola, Dori Allard, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres |
| Subject | Circus performers -- Juvenile fiction |
| Subject | Flying-machines -- Juvenile fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 78067 |
| Release Date | Feb 28, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 5006 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |