Rating: 
Summary: Wow!
Review: Such a wonderful book should not be reviewed, it should be read. I have passed the book onto many and will continue to do so until the binding gives out.
Rating:
Summary: All I can say is WOW!
Review: This book was just fantastic! I felt fear, happiness, saddness and pain all in one instant. I think this child had a hell of a life and was lucky live thru the beating she took. I felt so sorry for her and her sister and I only wish that her big brother could have done more. THANK THE LORD FOR ZORA!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking prose
Review: Fowler's breathtaking prose weaves a story replete with sorrow, but with a solid underpinning of hope. It's the kind of book you buy for yourself, and then, once you realize how beautifully told the story is, you buy a copy for your best friend.
Rating:
Summary: Realistic and touching, captures you from the beginning!
Review: Ms. Fowler does an excellent job of placing the
reader right in the room where all the turmoil is
taking place. One feels as if they really know the
characters, and you can see how "bad things"
can be done by "not so really bad people". I found it profoundly sad that a nine year old child
was actually safer on the street in the middle of the night than she was in her own home. I wanted to put my arms around Bird and comfort
her just as Miss Zora was able to. I won't forget this book soon
Rating: 
Summary: About Connie May Fowler, author of BEFORE WOMEN HAD WINGS
Review: Connie May Fowler lived in St. Augustine, Florida, until her father died when she was only seven years old, leaving Connie, her sister, Deidre, and their mother, Lee, in near poverty. They moved to Tampa, and as her mother struggled to make ends meet working as a bookkeeper and a maid in exchange for room and board in motels, Connie sought refuge in books. "I could be transported from the awful circumstances of my life simply by opening a book. And writing went hand-in-hand with reading. I found it difficult to express myself verbally. I was always frightened, and I had a quite horrible speech impediment until I was nine or ten. But I was able to write my feelings down. Often, when I was having trouble communicating with Mother, I would sit down and write to her. Writing for me was a kind of salvation."
Connie received a full scholarship to the University of Tampa. There she began publishing poetry in small presses, and her work was included in a photographic travel essay by Wendy Grad entitled "Up and Coming Poets of America." At the same time that Connie was beginning to see some modest success as a poet, her mother, an alcoholic who had never really gotten over the loss of her husband, started drinking more heavily than ever before and eventually died of cirrhosis. Connie, feeling lost, quit school and traveled through Mexico and the United States for two years. When she returned to Florida, the provost of the University of Tampa spotted her working as a waitress and persuaded her to complete her education. She returned to the university and earned a B.A. in English. For several years after, Connie worked as a freelance writer.
In 1987, she married Mika Fowler and moved to Kansas, where she enrolled in graduate school at the University of Kansas. She intended to study poetry, but a professor encouraged her to take a class in fiction writing. "That suggestion turned everything around for me. The fiction professor treated me for the first time in my life as if I was truly a writer. With her, everything coalesced. Fiction suddenly made sense to me." Sugar Cage, Connie's debut novel, began as a short story written to fulfill a writing assignment for a graduate fiction workshop. It evolved into her graduate thesis and eventually into a novel. Upon the publication of Sugar Cage, Connie was praised for her "genius of characterization" by the Boston Globe, for her "trusting and attuned ear" by the Miami Herald, and her ability "to present the ponderous problems her characters face with a style and grace that takes your breath away," according to the St. Petersburg Times.
While in Kansas, Connie began to develop a greater appreciation for her home state of Florida and its fragile and unique beauty. Connie and Mika returned to Florida after she received her M.A. in English, and they continue to live there. Upon her return, she began actively seeking ways to protect what was left of Florida's natural beauty. When the National and Oceanic Atmospheric Commission tapped St. Augustine's river system as a candidate for its newest national Estuarine Research Reserve, Connie championed the cause, forming the River to Sea Civic Organization, a group dedicated to ensuring that St. Augustine would be selected. In the face of stiff opposition from industry, she lobbied state and federal officials, organized caravans to the state capital, attended and spoke at numerous public hearings, and appeared before the Governor Lawton Chiles and his cabinet. Ultimately, the efforts proved successful. Connie then was elected the charter president of For Our Reserve, a citizen's organization that supports the various activities of the research reserve.
Disillusioned with runaway development along Florida's east coast, Connie moved two years ago to a small beach community in the Florida panhandle. She continues to speak out on behalf of Florida's environment and sees her role as that of an educator. Under the auspices of the Florida Humanities Council, Connie tours the state, speaking to various organizations about the need to preserve Florida's natural diversity. Growth management, wetland preservation, and the reintroduction of native species are just a few of the topics she discusses. In what she calls her "stump speech," she says of Florida, "We live in a land of myth -- of stories and songs and deeds inspired by resilient people living amid rare and diverse ecosystems. If our present is not underpinned by our past and by a healthy and sustainable environment, then our future will be hollow, for it will be missing the spark of accumulated knowledge, bereft of the wisdom inspired by our human and natural histories."
Connie May Fowler is the author of three novels, Sugar Cage, River of Hidden Dreams, and BEFORE WOMEN HAD WINGS, which was the winner of the 1996 Southern Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and will soon be a premiere Oprah Winfrey Presents movie on ABC Network Television.
Rating:
Summary: This book will stick with you.
Review: An easy-to-read novel about unforgettable characters. I read the book about 2 years ago and I still remember the characters. My 13-year old daughter read it also, and loved it. It's not the kind of book that after reading it you think "Wow, that was a great book!" It is a more subtle kind of greatness.
Rating: 
Summary: ...took a while to take off
Review: Emotions. Emotions. Emotions.
The author jam-packed this book with emotion -- and little storyline.
Rating: 
Summary: A story that tugs at the heart strings
Review: Perhaps one of the most difficult stories to write is a story about children and/or abuse. Interjecting just the right amount of sentimentality is often times too difficult of a task for even the most talented writers, but Connie May Fowler tackles both topics with a level of sensitivity and finesse that makes this book a "must read." BEFORE WOMEN HAD WINGS tells the story of Avocet "Bird" Jackson, a world-weary child in search of love among the people whose love should be a given but who are sometimes the most stingy with their affections. Bird tells the story of many young women who have either witnessed or experienced abuse in a matter-of-fact, no-holds bar fashion. The complexity of the relationship between she and her parents and she and her sister and brother provides readers with a wide-open look into a tragic life that eventually makes a transcendent jump into a path of redemption. This is a book well worth reading again and again.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning
Review: This is a very moving story about a little girl, Bird, who is wise beyond her six years. There is a lot of harshness, violence and horror in her tale. I am assuming that the author survived a very tough childhood as some of the scenes are quite graphic and haunting. There is light, however, at the end of the tunnel, a chance for them all.This is a book that will play itself back in my mind, as it opened my eyes to an entirely different lifesytle.
Rating:
Summary: Don't borrow it BUY IT!
Review: This is absolutely one of the best books I have ever read. It's hard to imagine a little girl with such spirit as Bird. I will definately reread this many times, and I'm sure I will enjoy it just as much as the first time I read it. A few say it's too depressing and a little violent, but please don't let that stop you from reading this moving story. You won't regret buying this book.
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